by Shane Su­perville

For­mer Snr Supt of po­lice and prospec­tive can­di­date for Tu­na­puna Roger Alexan­der has vowed that ad­di­tion­al re­sources and equip­ment would be in­vest­ed in this coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies if the UNC is vot­ed in­to of­fice.

Alexan­der made the re­marks as he de­liv­ered his ad­dress at the be­gin­ning of the UNC’s an­ti-crime town­hall meet­ing at Cen­tre Point Mall, Ch­agua­nas on Thurs­day night, as he lament­ed what he de­scribed as se­vere short­ages in equip­ment for law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Alexan­der served in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent crime-fight­ing, tac­ti­cal units dur­ing his 33-year ca­reer with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), in­clud­ing the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force (NOTF) and most re­cent­ly the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Task Force.

De­scrib­ing the preva­lence of AR-15s and oth­er au­to­mat­ic ri­fles in gang war­fare, he said po­lice of­fi­cers were out­gunned in the fight against crime which could ham­per their per­for­mance and abil­i­ty to con­front crim­i­nals.

He not­ed that his ex­pe­ri­ence and re­cent de­par­ture from the TTPS has giv­en him an ad­van­tage as he is in­ti­mate­ly ac­quaint­ed with what is need­ed.

“I must ask law en­force­ment what they want and you know what’s the nice thing about it?

“I just left! So I’m quite aware of what is re­quired.

“Mil­lions of dol­lars go­ing to­wards body­cams, we ap­pre­ci­ate that, thank you very much, but first re­move the ex­pired bul­let­proof vests from the body of the law en­force­ment of­fi­cer so that he can be giv­en the con­fi­dence to ap­proach his work in such a way that he can get the job done.

“Law en­force­ment must be able to match, gun for gun, round for round, not a pis­tol ver­sus an AR-15, that is a mis­match.”

Alexan­der said po­lice of­fi­cers were not the on­ly ones chal­lenged by a short­age of nec­es­sary re­sources, as he claimed that the Tu­na­puna Fire Sta­tion did not have any fire-fight­ing ve­hi­cles avail­able.

Re­fer­ring to con­ver­sa­tions with coast guard of­fi­cers in the re­cent past, he al­so claimed that they were ef­fec­tive­ly help­less against traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions which they ob­served from their jet­ty.

“I wit­nessed it my­self where they had to stay on the jet­ty and they had to look at per­sons up and down on the sea and do noth­ing.

“Sev­er­al per­sons with bags… if they got a chance they would put a house on one of those pirogues and all we can do is look and do noth­ing.

“Let me in­form the coast guard to­day. When you give us this op­por­tu­ni­ty we will give you what we need and es­tab­lish a prop­er sys­tem that caters for main­te­nance and re­pairs of equip­ment so in case it goes down, it will be dealt with al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.”

But apart from sheer num­bers of ve­hi­cles and equip­ment, Alexan­der al­so took is­sue with what he de­scribed as in­ef­fec­tive man­age­ment prac­tices where parts need­ed for the main­te­nance of po­lice ve­hi­cles could not be shared or trans­ferred due to ex­ces­sive bu­reau­cra­cy.