An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The 100 mem­bers of the T&T Vol­un­teer De­fence Force who were called out last De­cem­ber to as­sist law en­force­ment for three months dur­ing the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons, will re­main on the job un­til June af­ter their tenure in the role was ex­tend­ed.

This was the word from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a pass­ing out pa­rade at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James. He said the de­ci­sion was ap­proved dur­ing Thurs­day’s Cab­i­net meet­ing.

Not­ing that Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing sus­tain the gains made dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE) af­ter it ex­pires on April 13, he said, “Cab­i­net ap­proved a fur­ther ex­ten­sion for three months with a bud­get of over $3 mil­lion so that law en­force­ment can con­tin­ue its ef­forts af­ter the State of Emer­gency.”

He added, “We ex­tend­ed the call out of the Re­serve Army to con­tin­ue in op­er­a­tion be­cause they were called out last year De­cem­ber, pri­or to the Christ­mas sea­son and that was for a pe­ri­od of three months, and that three-month pe­ri­od was due to end on the 31st of March.”

Say­ing he had been meet­ing con­stant­ly with the se­cu­ri­ty agency heads – in­clud­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice; T&T Prison Ser­vice and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency – since as­sum­ing of­fice on March 17, Gon­za­les said, “I con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with Min­is­ter (Fitzger­ald) Hinds, who had been in this po­si­tion for four years.”

He Hinds has been guid­ing him on how to ap­proach “press­ing mat­ters” he in­her­it­ed.

“I must say the col­lab­o­ra­tion and tran­si­tion is go­ing quite seam­less­ly, and it is mak­ing the job a lit­tle bit eas­i­er.”

Asked if the on­go­ing probe in­to sus­pend­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hay­wood-Christo­pher was a con­cern to him and among the press­ing mat­ters he was look­ing in­to, Gon­za­les said, “No, it is not on my desk be­cause that is a mat­ter be­tween the TTPS and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. The of­fice of the Min­is­ter is not con­sult­ed on this mat­ter and I would want to keep the Min­is­ter’s of­fice com­plete­ly out.”

Hav­ing in­spect­ed his first pa­rade as min­is­ter and ac­cept­ing the 96 re­cruits of Batch Two of 2024 yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said he felt a sense of nos­tal­gia up­on see­ing them march past.

Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same joy and pride he felt over 25 years ago when he passed out from the then-Po­lice Train­ing Col­lege, Gon­za­les said, “The jour­ney is a very dif­fi­cult jour­ney and we must feel a sense of pride that we still have young men and young women, de­spite the chal­lenges, they de­cide to come for­ward and of­fer them­selves for na­tion­al ser­vice.”

Ad­mit­ting the crime sit­u­a­tion had changed since then, he said the world was brought clos­er through so­cial me­dia and tech­nol­o­gy. He said crime was a flu­id land­scape which re­quired chang­ing strate­gies dai­ly and as such, they could not af­ford to sit back and re­lax.

Gon­za­les ad­mit­ted, “As law en­force­ment changes, the crim­i­nals al­so change their strate­gies to get away from law en­force­ment.”

Asked what would hap­pen to per­sons de­tained un­der the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions when the SoE ends next month, Gon­za­les said, “At­tor­neys for the state are look­ing at pros­e­cu­tion where there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute some of the per­sons who have been de­tained un­der de­ten­tion or­ders.”

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 58 Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) had been ex­e­cut­ed un­der the SoE and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 42 per­sons had so far been de­tained. For those still in cus­tody and against whom no charges have been prof­fered up to April 13, they will be re­leased.

The 96 re­cruits who passed out yes­ter­day, af­ter sev­en months in train­ing, in­clud­ed 76 males and 20 fe­males.

WPC Prime was award­ed the Most Eth­i­cal Fe­male Re­cruit, while PC Mo­hammed was named the Most Eth­i­cal Male Re­cruit – and PC Mol­lah was ad­judged the Most Out­stand­ing Re­cruit and re­ceived the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Tro­phy and the Best Stick. PC Mol­lah al­so gained the high­est marks in the Crim­i­nal Law course.