An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Am­cham T&T chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ni­rad Tewarie says one pos­si­ble so­lu­tion to the spi­ralling crime rate in T&T is for the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plore in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments that al­low for high­ly trained pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty teams to sup­ple­ment the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

Speak­ing at UWI St Au­gus­tine Crime Sym­po­sium on yes­ter­day, Tewarie said this has been done be­fore, when of­fi­cers from out­side of T&T were grant­ed Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) sta­tus to as­sist lo­cal law en­force­ment.

If im­ple­ment­ed ef­fec­tive­ly, he said such mea­sures could help sup­press gang ac­tiv­i­ty and oth­er crim­i­nal el­e­ments, pro­vid­ing breath­ing room for longer-term re­forms to take ef­fect.

“These times de­mand think­ing out­side the box. At Am­cham, we are al­ready deeply in­volved in the soft as­pects of crime pre­ven­tion, but we al­so recog­nise the ur­gency of the cur­rent cri­sis. You may re­call that Am­cham Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­port­ed the State of Emer­gency as a means of pro­vid­ing that breath­ing room and sig­nalling that we are all in this to­geth­er,” Tewarie out­lined.

He said there are three spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTPS and the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try:

1. Reg­u­lar in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing ses­sions be­tween the TTPS and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies—both at the re­gion­al and na­tion­al lev­els. A mod­el to fol­low could be the OS­AC (Over­seas Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil) ap­proach used by US em­bassies, which fos­ters di­a­logue and in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing be­tween law en­force­ment and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers;

2. Ex­pand­ing the Ea­gle Eye pro­gramme, which has al­ready seen some suc­cess in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties. Strength­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms and the TTPS—par­tic­u­lar­ly in shar­ing footage and in­tel­li­gence—could sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance crime-fight­ing ef­forts;

3. Stream­lin­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es such as ob­tain­ing Cer­tifi­cates of Char­ac­ter and Firearm User’s Em­ploy­ee Cer­tifi­cates (FUECs) for pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. Prop­er screen­ing and ef­fi­cient li­cens­ing will en­sure that se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel are well-vet­ted and prop­er­ly equipped;

Tewarie out­lined that re­duc­ing crime does not mean busi­ness­es will dis­ap­pear or be­come un­prof­itable.

“As Am­cham, we want busi­ness­es to thrive—but not at the ex­pense of so­ci­ety. If we share this goal, we must fo­cus on so­lu­tions that ac­tive­ly con­tribute to crime re­duc­tion,” he added.