Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi has re­ject­ed claims by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der that the re­cent spike in mur­ders could have been avoid­ed had the Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ed the pro­posed Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi dis­missed Alexan­der’s crit­i­cism as “in­fan­tile,” ar­gu­ing that the Min­is­ter’s rea­son­ing does not with­stand scruti­ny.

Alexan­der re­cent­ly ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of fail­ing to sup­port the ZOSO Bill, which the Gov­ern­ment said would have pro­vid­ed en­hanced pow­ers to se­cu­ri­ty forces in des­ig­nat­ed high-crime ar­eas. He sug­gest­ed the bill’s de­feat con­tributed to the cur­rent uptick in vi­o­lent crime.

“They al­ways ask about our crime plan, but when we put some­thing for­ward, it is not sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion or oth­ers. They should ask res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ties they rep­re­sent whether they want­ed this type of law en­force­ment pres­ence. Peo­ple con­tin­ue to miss out on what could have been a per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to change things,” Alexan­der said.

How­ev­er, Al-Rawi ar­gued that the core el­e­ments of the pro­posed law can al­ready be im­ple­ment­ed op­er­a­tional­ly with­out spe­cial leg­is­la­tion.

“The state­ment from Min­is­ter Alexan­der is in­fan­tile,” Al-Rawi said. “If he’s cor­rect, then look at it this way—it’s very sim­ple. What was ZOSO? It was a joint op­er­a­tion be­tween the po­lice and the army in spe­cial ar­eas. There were on­ly two as­pects that were dif­fer­ent: one, you could have a cur­few; and two, sol­diers could ar­rest.”

He main­tained that joint pa­trols be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force can al­ready take place in crime hotspots with­out par­lia­men­tary ap­proval.

“What is stop­ping Min­is­ter Alexan­der from invit­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Chief of De­fence Staff to con­duct joint pa­trols any­where in this coun­try that is con­sid­ered a hotspot?” Al-Rawi asked. “Have the po­lice make the ar­rests in­stead of the army—ab­solute­ly noth­ing. When you analyse what the ZOSO was giv­ing you and what you can al­ready do, his state­ment is ab­solute rub­bish.”

The ZOSO Bill was pi­lot­ed by the Gov­ern­ment as part of its an­ti-crime strat­e­gy. It sought to al­low the des­ig­na­tion of spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties as Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, grant­i­ng en­hanced pow­ers to se­cu­ri­ty forces op­er­at­ing with­in those ar­eas. Among its key pro­vi­sions were the au­thor­i­ty to im­pose lim­it­ed cur­fews and to al­low mem­bers of the De­fence Force to ex­er­cise pow­ers of ar­rest.

The leg­is­la­tion re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate. How­ev­er, when it came be­fore the Up­per House, it failed to se­cure the nec­es­sary sup­port of Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and did not pass.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have since main­tained that the ad­di­tion­al pow­ers con­tained in the leg­is­la­tion would have strength­ened the State’s abil­i­ty to con­tain vi­o­lent crime.

Mean­while, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish sug­gest­ed that, rather than as­sign­ing blame, the Gov­ern­ment should re­vis­it the pro­posed amend­ments and re­turn the leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment.

“Crime is a very un­pre­dictable thing,” Mc­Nish said. “If he thinks that the ZOSO bill, or the ab­sence there­of, is re­spon­si­ble for the uptick in crime, I sup­pose he has sta­tis­tics that he’s re­ly­ing on. I am un­aware of those sta­tis­tics.”

Mc­Nish said he sup­ports the in­tent be­hind the leg­is­la­tion but be­lieves re­fine­ments are need­ed.

“As I said be­fore, I sup­port the con­cept in the bill. I sup­port the ob­jec­tives of the bill. I re­al­ly wish the Gov­ern­ment would bring back the bill, con­sid­er some of the amend­ments pro­posed by the In­de­pen­dents, and let’s get the bill passed.”