Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

In­ef­fec­tive!

This is how crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad is de­scrib­ing the state of emer­gency de­clared in T&T yes­ter­day as he called for a tar­get­ed at­tack on the root caus­es of crime rather than a “broad-brush” re­sponse to the high crime rate.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain, act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young em­pha­sised that the SoE was called to ad­dress vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in­volv­ing il­le­gal firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, and ex­plo­sives.

Young added that fol­low­ing the mur­ders of six men in gang killings that took place on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day out­side Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion and Priz­gar Lands, re­spec­tive­ly, Gov­ern­ment was brac­ing for fur­ther gang killings based on po­lice in­tel­li­gence. (See page 6)

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Seep­er­sad said be­cause of the broad­ness of the SoE, “it’s a less than ef­fi­cient use of re­sources.” He said an ef­fi­cient an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive would tar­get the root caus­es of crime, which the SoE did not do. He said an ex­am­ple of a tar­get­ed method was the CURE Vi­o­lence Pro­gramme from the Cit­i­zens Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

He said, “If you are fa­mil­iar with the Cure Vi­o­lence mod­el, which has been used suc­cess­ful­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there are vi­o­lence in­ter­rupters who work with­in that par­tic­u­lar mod­el. They’re per­sons known and re­spect­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty, but al­so trained in me­di­a­tion. And when con­flicts like this arise, they go on the sit­u­a­tion, and they calm it down and cool it down to re­al­ly try to pre­vent that type of re­tal­ia­to­ry vi­o­lence that could oc­cur. And that mod­el has proven to be very, very ef­fec­tive in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah said the SoE should be used as a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty forces, who have been work­ing in si­los for too long. He said the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF), which now has pow­ers of ar­rest, should be us­ing its in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing skills to up­set crim­i­nals.

“The De­fence Force plays a very, very im­por­tant, in­te­gral role in in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, and there­fore, the in­tel­li­gence in­fra­struc­ture and ar­chi­tec­ture of the De­fence Force will be most like­ly tapped in­to dur­ing a time like a state of emer­gency. What we would like to see, how­ev­er, is that to­geth­er, every­body works much smarter in achiev­ing the ob­jec­tives dur­ing this time of state of emer­gency, and do not op­er­ate in si­los.”

In March last year, Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel, told a par­lia­men­tary Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) that the biggest chal­lenge fac­ing the TTDF was hav­ing to pa­trol with po­lice, as the TTDF mem­bers were not trained in law en­force­ment as po­lice were.

Asked about this, now that TTDF mem­bers had pow­ers of ar­rest and could con­duct search­es with­out war­rants, Heer­ah said the TTDF mem­bers were trained to sup­port the po­lice, and their role dur­ing the SoE would be to con­tin­ue do­ing so, but in larg­er num­bers.

Seep­er­sad said the TTDF should have un­der­gone train­ing to al­low them to bet­ter in­ter­act with the pub­lic and fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the use of force poli­cies.

Seep­er­sad added that while the SoE was not the best choice, the state’s im­me­di­ate re­sponse to a pos­si­ble threat was need­ed.

Last Fri­day, Ad­ven­tist pas­tor Clive Dot­tin said if he was in charge, he would have called a state of emer­gency. Asked about it yes­ter­day, he said it was need­ed as the coun­try could not con­tin­ue on the pre-SoE tra­jec­to­ry.

“We have to make sac­ri­fices. You’re not go­ing to solve the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty that you have in this so­ci­ety. All of us have to pay a price, and some­times it’s a sur­ren­der to our free­doms. Now, I must al­so give some ad­vice to those in au­thor­i­ty. You have sig­nif­i­cant pow­ers of ar­rest, of de­ten­tion with­out for­mal charges; that is an amaz­ing thing. And if this au­thor­i­ty you have dur­ing a state of emer­gency is not used wide­ly in the long term, all of us will suf­fer to a cat­a­stroph­ic ex­tent.”