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Saturday, February 15, 2025

Top cop: Gun amnesty not right for T&T now

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20110209

Gun amnesty is not right for T&T at this point in time. This was the rec­om­men­da­tion put for­ward yes­ter­day by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs at the launch of a re­gion­al project on gun con­trol, ti­tled Strength­en­ing Cari­com Co-op­er­a­tion to re­duce Gun Crime, at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre. The project is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Cari­com's Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS) and Project Ploughshares, a Cana­di­an non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion. Gibbs said: "Al­though gun amnesty has proven val­ue abroad, at this time we have cho­sen to put it on the back burn­er in favour of oth­er ini­tia­tives, like the one be­ing launched to­day."

The three-year project, which is co-or­di­nat­ed by IM­PACS, aims to mod­ernise and in­te­grate the re­gion's in­for­ma­tion man­age­ment sys­tems in the area of arms and am­mu­ni­tion and to de­vel­op an­ti-gun pol­i­cy, based on re­gion­al trends and in­ter-state com­par­isons. It was not­ed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Labour Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and chair of the Cari­com Coun­cil for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Law En­force­ment (CON­SLE), Dr Er­rol Cort, who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress, that T&T was one of the few mem­bers of Cari­com which have im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures rec­om­mend­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions on gun con­trol.

The pro­gramme high­light­ed the im­per­a­tive to move away from a pa­per-based sys­tem of keep­ing records of im­port, ex­port, trans­fer, li­cens­ing and seizure of small arms and light weapons. The project was fund­ed by the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment to the tune of $12 mil­lion through its An­ti-Crime Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing Pro­gramme. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy, who ad­dressed the event, said re­duc­ing the il­le­gal sup­ply of hand­guns to crim­i­nals was crit­i­cal to re­duc­ing gun vi­o­lence.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was in full sup­port of the project which would help in na­tion­al and re­gion­al pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion and the day-to-day work of law en­force­ment agen­cies. Sandy high­light­ed a bill to amend the Firearms Act, Chap­ter 16:01, which he brought to Par­lia­ment three weeks ago, as part of Gov­ern­ment's plans to fight gun crime in T&T. When pressed about Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion on board­er con­trol in pre­vent­ing the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal firearms and drugs, Sandy said Gov­ern­ment had not aban­doned the wa­ters of T&T.

"We are pur­su­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting ad­di­tion­al as­sets to pa­trol our wa­ters," he said.

Sandy al­so said the Na­tion­al Men­tor­ing Pro­gramme, to be launched in April, and oth­er so­cial­ly-ori­ent­ed projects would aid in the fight against crime by tar­get­ing T&T's youths. The Na­tion­al Men­tor­ing Pro­gramme will be of­fi­ci­at­ed by for­mer US sec­re­tary of state Col­in Pow­ell.


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