Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Cer­tain crim­i­nals are now “lik­ing” T&T and they aren’t “small-timers”.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed this yes­ter­day, stat­ing this was the rea­son he met with the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) and Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA) ear­li­er this week dur­ing his mis­sion to the US.

Row­ley spoke about the trip at a me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, while re­port­ing on his re­cent four-day mis­sion to the US, where he and a five-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion met with of­fi­cials on se­cu­ri­ty, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy, trade and oth­er is­sues.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley ac­knowl­edged that con­cern about crime, crim­i­nal­i­ty and vi­o­lence was is­sue num­ber one in T&T, from schools to busi­ness places, homes to bars.

Row­ley said among the US of­fi­cials whom the T&T del­e­ga­tion met were of­fi­cials of the FBI.

He said, “We do have some prob­lems in Trinidad and To­ba­go which I’ll not bur­den you with to­day, but we do have some in­ter­nal prob­lems and giv­en the na­ture of our re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, the re­sources of the FBI and the CIA were made avail­able to us to deal with our own in­ter­nal prob­lems.”

Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly ex­plained, “We’re an open coun­try to in­ter­na­tion­al trade and con­tact and even out­side of our of­fi­cial en­try points, what we’re dis­cov­er­ing is that ... cer­tain crim­i­nals are lik­ing us and they are not ‘small timers’ - I say no more on that at this time. These are mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty which ought to bet­ter be kept where they are for the mo­ment.”

On whether it’s a nor­mal cir­cum­stance for a T&T Prime Min­is­ter to meet with the CIA di­rec­tor, Row­ley replied, “If we have to and I was very pleased I was able to be­cause we do have in­ter­ests in com­mon.”

De­tail­ing oth­er de­vel­op­ments emerg­ing from the trip, Row­ley fur­ther re­vealed work is to be done on spe­cialised em­bed­ded units to in­ves­ti­gate or­gan­ised crime, “... as we are now at­tract­ing el­e­ments of in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­ised crime which is very con­cern­ing to the Gov­ern­ment.”

“So we’re dis­cussing this with the US to get as much help as we can in en­sur­ing that our bad sit­u­a­tion is not wors­ened by these de­vel­op­ments,” he added.

The es­tab­lish­ment of a Gun Crime In­tel­li­gence Unit is al­so among pri­or­i­ty ar­eas of the T&T-US co-op­er­a­tion, fol­low­ing con­cerns about flow of arms and am­mu­ni­tions in­to T&T from the US, he said.

The US al­so agreed to help T&T with in­creased ma­rine op­er­a­tions. This will be worked on in the com­ing weeks. Row­ley said T&T has an is­sue of its bor­ders. “Notwith­stand­ing all the re­sources we put out, there are peo­ple who every night try to pen­e­trate our bor­ders and some suc­ceed,” he said.

As­sis­tance was se­cured on polic­ing strate­gies to boost crime fight­ing and cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty.

Row­ley’s team al­so met with Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials who “gave us a lis­ten­ing ear on what we might need” in as­sis­tance on cer­tain mat­ters. They al­so met with se­nior of­fi­cials of State Bu­reau of Cy­ber­space and Dig­i­tal Pol­i­cy.

Row­ley said his del­e­ga­tion spent Tues­day morn­ing with the of­fi­cials in a Lan­g­ley work­shop on cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and in­se­cu­ri­ty and the dan­gers of the un­truths of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) and the abil­i­ty of AI to con­vert and make it dif­fi­cult for even lead­ers and gov­ern­ments to de­ter­mine what is true and not.

“Giv­en the pos­i­tives of the tech­nol­o­gy, there are a whole lot of neg­a­tives that we have to now con­front,” Row­ley added.

A cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty bi­lat­er­al and tech­ni­cal work­ing group will be es­tab­lished to of­fer in­sti­tu­tion­al and tech­ni­cal ex­changes and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion sup­port to T&T.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment was very grate­ful for the heavy sup­port re­ceived from a very proac­tive US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond, who’s very heav­i­ly in­vest­ed in T&T’s in­ter­ests and has worked close­ly with Gov­ern­ment on all is­sues.

‘Hinds was busy’

Row­ley said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who wasn’t in the del­e­ga­tion, “was tied up to his eye­balls at home,” while he and for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who is now the En­er­gy Min­is­ter, were abroad.

“I think that’s a good bal­ance. The ab­sence of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter from a for­eign trip isn’t an im­ped­i­ment,” Row­ley said, not­ing Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Has­sel Bac­chus was more di­rect­ly in­volved in the mis­sion than the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

He not­ed the Chief of De­fence Staff was al­so on the del­e­ga­tion.

Asked about na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues - and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s ad­mis­sion that tar­gets weren’t met - Row­ley de­ferred queries to a me­dia brief­ing he’ll hold on Tues­day. That would in­clude on Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for the CoP and Car­ni­val se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

Row­ley de­scribed as “non­sense” claims that he doesn’t care about crime.

“There are so many things we have to do at the same time that we can’t spend all our time on one thing, even though that thing is big and im­por­tant. The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter has to deal with every­thing at the same time and be­cause I’m not the one deal­ing with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, doesn’t mean na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty isn’t be­ing dealt with,” he said.