To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is mov­ing to choke crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and the flow of guns in­to the is­land.

In a swift re­sponse to To­ba­go’s un­prece­dent­ed mur­der toll, Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day launched im­me­di­ate se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to se­cure its bor­ders and stop in­land crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

This in­cludes the rental of two fish­ing ves­sels and the pur­chase of ve­hi­cles for the T&T Coast Guard to mon­i­tor the sea and op­er­ate on land, and the close mon­i­tor­ing of the move­ment of vis­i­tors and lo­cals in the ac­com­mo­da­tion and car rental busi­ness.

While the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pri­mar­i­ly lies with the Gov­ern­ment, Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go is pre­pared to lead the war against crim­i­nals.

He said the THA will rent two ves­sels to restart bor­der sur­veil­lance and pa­trols to pro­tect the is­land’s vul­ner­a­ble bor­ders.

He said this step is cru­cial, as there were no Coast Guard ves­sels as­signed to the is­land and the il­le­gal smug­gling of firearms pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. not­ing guns had been used in 18 of the 19 mur­ders record­ed on the is­land this year.

“We are look­ing at two, per­haps, fish­ing ves­sels. We won’t have the funds to do large ves­sels, the kind the Coast Guard is ac­cus­tomed to, but we want to pro­cure two ves­sels by way of rental, and we are not talk­ing about those lit­tle pirogues.”

In ad­di­tion to the tem­po­rary ves­sels, Au­gus­tine said the THA will pro­vide ve­hi­cles so the Coast Guard can move be­tween its Scar­bor­ough and Char­lot­teville bases.

Cou­pled with the use of the 188 CCTV sur­veil­lance cam­eras across the is­land, Au­gus­tine said the THA will de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive data­base to track all vis­i­tors, us­ing da­ta from ho­tel book­ings to car rentals.

He said this will sti­fle crim­i­nals who fre­quent­ly change lo­ca­tions to evade de­tec­tion.

“This data­base is to al­low us to have in re­al-time, in­for­ma­tion on who is stay­ing where. The re­al­i­ty is those with the in­ten­tion to com­mit crimes are very mo­bile, they tend to rent three and four places around the is­land and they move about quite of­ten,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about pri­va­cy, Au­gus­tine as­sured that those us­ing pub­lic ac­com­mo­da­tion should not wor­ry about the new track­ing mea­sures, as they are aimed sole­ly at en­hanc­ing se­cu­ri­ty and pre­vent­ing crime on the is­land.

“We are do­ing this as a unit­ed body of stake­hold­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of those prop­er­ties on the is­land. And, yes, some may choose not to, that’s their choice but it is us of­fer­ing an av­enue in which we can keep you safe,” Au­gus­tine said.

“Any­one stay­ing at pub­lic ac­com­mo­da­tion should not be con­cerned about pri­va­cy. If toy check in­to ho­tels any­where in the world they tend to ask for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

The Port Au­thor­i­ty has al­so been pin­point­ed as a key play­er in these new se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

He said port op­er­a­tions will be in­te­grat­ed in­to the is­land’s over­all safe­ty strat­e­gy.

Au­gus­tine, sup­port­ed by Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, re­mind­ed To­ba­go of the im­por­tance of stand­ing in this war on crime as a com­mu­ni­ty.

Cham­ber, TTPS con­fi­dent plan will work

Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce To­ba­go Di­vi­sion chair­man Cur­tis Williams said yes­ter­day that he is con­fi­dent To­ba­go will re­gain con­trol, and he doesn’t be­lieve the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion will last long enough to im­pact the econ­o­my.

“The as­sur­ance giv­en to us to­day will go a long way and we are look­ing for­ward to an ex­cit­ed and pros­per­ous Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val sea­son,” Williams said fol­low­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence host­ed by Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine an­nounc­ing new crime ini­tia­tives.

Head of the TTPS To­ba­go Di­vi­sion Col­lis Hazel said there will be fre­quent joint pa­trol with po­lice and De­fence Force mem­bers through­out To­ba­go in the com­ing days.

“We will be see­ing a con­stant pres­ence of this joint re­la­tion with­in the TTPS work­ing with the De­fense Force as we utilise a mul­ti­pronged ap­proach to lessen and dis­man­tle the man­age­ment and crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

What hap­pened to To­ba­go’s Coast Guard ves­sel?

On No­vem­ber 20, 2017, the is­land’s on­ly Coast Guard ves­sel, a white pirogue, was found par­tial­ly sub­merged near the North Coast in down­town Scar­bor­ough around 8.45 am.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed the ves­sel sank be­cause its elec­tri­cal pump, which was sup­posed to pre­vent wa­ter from col­lect­ing, had been mal­func­tion­ing and fi­nal­ly failed.

At the time of the in­ci­dent, the boat was still tied to the pier, mak­ing it vis­i­ble above the wa­ter. Coast Guard of­fi­cials quick­ly se­cured the area and re­quest­ed that the in­ci­dent be kept qui­et. It was re­port­ed that wa­ter-filled drums and airbags were used to float the ves­sel again. The en­gines were bad­ly dam­aged and had to be re­moved for ser­vic­ing.

The re­pairs were es­ti­mat­ed to cost near­ly $1 mil­lion. Since that in­ci­dent, To­ba­go has not had a ded­i­cat­ed ves­sel, which has sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed Coast Guard op­er­a­tions over the past sev­en years. There was no con­fir­ma­tion that the ves­sel was re­turned to To­ba­go af­ter re­pairs.

In 2019, then-min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young launched two re­fur­bished in­ter­cep­tors, one in Char­lot­teville and the oth­er in Scar­bor­ough. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia sev­er­al months af­ter the ves­sels were launched, they were sent to Trinidad for ser­vic­ing and were nev­er re­turned.