Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the coun­try should not ap­pear soft on crime, and he is propos­ing that bail be de­nied for 180 days to those caught with il­le­gal guns.

Re­act­ing yes­ter­day to the res­cue of kid­nap vic­tim Jankie Satie Karim by po­lice, Alexan­der com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers for their swift re­sponse.

Karim, 44, of An­poo Street, Spring Vil­lage, Val­sayn, was kid­napped on Ju­ly 13 while close to her Val­sayn home. She was res­cued, and one of her kid­nap­pers was killed at a house in Ram­panal­gas, To­co, Mon­day night dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion by po­lice. A fe­male sus­pect was held, and a male sus­pect was shot dead dur­ing an ex­change with of­fi­cers.

Hours lat­er, a sec­ond sus­pect was killed by po­lice dur­ing a shoot-out.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer said crim­i­nals must not be al­lowed to feel com­fort­able. He in­sist­ed that law en­force­ment of­fi­cers should use lethal force if at­tacked.

“We have learned from for­eign coun­tries how we should treat with kid­nap­pers and kid­nap­ping. Mur­der­ers, per­sons who are hired to kill peo­ple and all of that. There’s a par­tic­u­lar way you treat them. And this coun­try must not seem like it is soft in any way. We have to treat the crim­i­nals in such a way. Two things can hap­pen: we in­car­cer­ate them, hope­ful­ly it will make sense, or if they in any way go af­ter the of­fi­cers or de­cide not to give up while they’re armed with their weapons, then the po­lice of­fi­cer must use the use-of-force pol­i­cy and treat with them.”

He said crim­i­nals are not afraid of be­ing im­pris­oned, and the State’s re­sponse should al­so in­clude a change in leg­is­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly for gun of­fences.

“A man can­not be in pos­ses­sion of a firearm, shoot­ing peo­ple, killing peo­ple, and that’s the end of that. You hold him and you charge him. A man who’s in pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal firearm, de­tained by the po­lice, no bail for 180 days, and once you are con­vict­ed, 25 to life.”

The stance tak­en by Alexan­der on bail is in con­trast to that of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which, while in op­po­si­tion, staunch­ly op­posed the An­ti-Gang Leg­is­la­tion in 2020, which it pi­lot­ed in 2011. The bill al­lowed of­fend­ers to be de­nied bail for 120 days once charged with an of­fence un­der the law.

Two years lat­er, the UNC al­so shot down the Bail (Amend­ment) (Ex­ten­sion of Du­ra­tion) Bill, 2022. The bill sought to give an­oth­er year to the three-year sun­set clause of the Bail (Amend­ment) Act 2019, which de­nied bail to sus­pects of se­ri­ous crimes who had a past con­vic­tion for a se­ri­ous of­fence.

Last year, the UNC sup­port­ed the amend­ment to the Bail Bill, which al­lowed mur­der ac­cused to be grant­ed bail. This fol­lowed the Privy Coun­cil rul­ing of Ak­ili Charles against the State in 2022. The Law Lords found that the Bail Act of 1994, which lim­it­ed ju­di­cial of­fi­cers from grant­i­ng bail to mur­der ac­cused, was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.