Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les has chal­lenged for­mer se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer Roger Alexan­der's claims that crime-fight­ing re­sources and equip­ment are in short sup­ply to var­i­ous arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

Gon­za­les made the com­ment dur­ing the first episode of CNC3’s Agen­da 41 pro­gramme yes­ter­day, say­ing he wit­nessed first­hand the tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties of this coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. He chid­ed Alexan­der for sug­gest­ing law en­force­ment agen­cies were ill-pre­pared.

Alexan­der, who is the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) Gen­er­al Elec­tion can­di­date for Tu­na­puna, lament­ed what he de­scribed as the State’s short­falls in crime-fight­ing dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing last week. Alexan­der claimed there were short­ages in body ar­mour, Coast Guard ves­sels, fire ten­ders and in­ef­fec­tive man­age­ment prac­tices hin­der­ing se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions na­tion­wide.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les re­ferred to his vis­it to the Knowsley Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, which hous­es the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC), where he said the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus in­clud­ed sig­nif­i­cant tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty.

“I was re­al­ly shocked to hear a for­mer se­nior Supt get­ting on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form and giv­ing the im­pres­sion that this same TTPS that you served as a se­nior mem­ber, is op­er­at­ing in the 1800s. I mean, it is ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous be­cause as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, I was able to vis­it Knowsley Build­ing and see the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able.”

An­oth­er guest, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, al­so dis­agreed with Alexan­der’s com­ments, not­ing that even dur­ing his tenure (2018 to 2021), tech­nol­o­gy was in­te­grat­ed in­to po­lice op­er­a­tions. He said this was done to max­imise po­lice pres­ence, while re­duc­ing re­sponse times to emer­gen­cies by de­ploy­ing of­fi­cers clos­est to the scene of crimes.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said his con­cerns were still valid, as he ques­tioned to what ex­tent the tech­nol­o­gy was used.

“Even if you have tech­nol­o­gy, is it suit­able for the job and ef­fec­tive enough to have the kind of im­pact you’re look­ing for?

“This whole body­cam is­sue, for in­stance, it’s a big de­vice you hang on some­one’s chest. Mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy has a small­er, sleek­er ver­sion that is more user-friend­ly.

“There has to be best prac­tice, you can’t just or­der some­thing and tell a man to ‘put it on,’ with­out there be­ing any tri­als or tests to see how prac­ti­cal it is,” he said.