Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says he in­tends to meet with of­fi­cials in and out of the re­gion to dis­cuss mat­ters of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, as he stressed the need for a firm re­sponse to crim­i­nal­i­ty.

Alexan­der, who has been in of­fice for one week as of yes­ter­day, told Guardian Me­dia that he in­tends to con­sid­er all op­tions nec­es­sary in deal­ing with mat­ters of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

Re­fer­ring to ef­forts un­der­way by the gov­ern­ment of El Sal­vador in crack­ing down on gangs and oth­er or­gan­ised crime units, Alexan­der com­ment­ed on the sta­tis­ti­cal suc­cess ob­served in that coun­try's mur­der rate.

"The crim­i­nals have waged war on our cit­i­zens and it is time for that to stop and we in­tend to stop it by any law­ful means nec­es­sary.

"El Sal­vador seems to be play­ing in my head time and time again and the man­ner in which they treat­ed with their sit­u­a­tion and they are now one of the most peace­ful coun­tries in the world.

"Who knows what can hap­pen here."

El Sal­vador Pres­i­dent Nay­ib Bukele or­dered a crack­down on gangs and gang ac­tiv­i­ty, lead­ing to the ar­rest of sus­pect­ed gang­sters in the coun­try.

As of March this year, 85,000 peo­ple ac­cused of hav­ing ties to gangs have been held.

The crack­down has been said to be pop­u­lar among Sal­vado­rans, who were frus­trat­ed with gang vi­o­lence and crimes.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site In­sight­Crime.org the mur­der toll in El Sal­vador con­tin­ued to drop in 2024, with a "record low" mur­der toll of 1.9 homi­cides per 100,000 cit­i­zens.

Alexan­der al­so met with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin yes­ter­day morn­ing to dis­cuss dif­fer­ent crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

"They (the TTPS) rolled out to­day their strate­gic plan and how to go for­ward.

"We en­dorsed it and I gave him my in­put on what we should treat with now more than ever, what the pub­lic is cry­ing out for.

"He ex­pressed to me that he is look­ing for­ward for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of some laws to treat with the crime sit­u­a­tion."

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers in op­er­a­tional units said that while they an­tic­i­pat­ed that Alexan­der would have a spe­cial ad­van­tage as a pol­i­cy-mak­er for se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, they al­so ex­pect­ed a "heavy work­load," giv­en his rep­u­ta­tion as a "worka­holic" while he was a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Alexan­der re­spond­ed to this, say­ing that he in­tend­ed to "give law en­force­ment more."

"Law en­force­ment must un­der­stand now more than ever we are in a fight to save our coun­try and our fu­ture.

"Every­body must get on board."