Shane Su­perville 

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt 

As he ac­knowl­edged the threats posed by crim­i­nals in and out of prison, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has promised that ad­di­tion­al re­sources will be di­rect­ed to the prison ser­vice to clamp down on il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties be­hind bars.

Gon­za­les made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing his ad­dress at the PNM's meet­ing at the Mt Hope/ Mt Lam­bert Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, on Fri­day night.

Gon­za­les was ap­point­ed as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, SC, ear­li­er in March, suc­ceed­ing Fitzger­ald Hinds, who served in the role since 2021. 

Dur­ing his ad­dress, Gon­za­les said he un­der­stood the mag­ni­tude of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of his of­fice and re­called be­ing briefed by the var­i­ous heads of dif­fer­ent arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Gon­za­les lament­ed that one of the chal­lenges out­lined by the prison ser­vice was the fact that killings were some­times or­dered by crim­i­nals al­ready ar­rest­ed and held from be­hind bars.

Based on this, he said an ag­gres­sive push against crim­i­nals every­where was need­ed.

"You have to ask your­selves when you con­fis­cate mo­bile phones in the morn­ing, if they are re­ceiv­ing it by the af­ter­noon.

"We would have giv­en the head of the prison ser­vice that we will do every­thing pos­si­ble to erad­i­cate il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties be­hind bars.

"The fight is not on­ly on the streets or the com­mu­ni­ties it must be fought in the walls of the prison."

In the past sev­er­al prison of­fi­cers have been mur­dered while off du­ty.

Po­lice have sus­pect­ed these mur­ders may have been or­dered by in­mates.

With­out di­vulging more de­tails, Gon­za­les added that re­sources would be giv­en to the prison of­fi­cers to guar­an­tee their pro­tec­tion from crim­i­nals, "in­side and out­side prison."

Gon­za­les al­so not­ed that two Cape Class pa­trol ves­sels were cur­rent­ly in use, adding that three in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels would be in ser­vice, but did not pro­vide a spe­cif­ic time­line as to when they would be ob­tained.

But in ad­di­tion to the pro­vi­sion of phys­i­cal re­sources, Gon­za­les said that equal­ly im­por­tant was the need for lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies to ral­ly sup­port and con­fi­dence from their re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty coun­ter­parts.

He warned that fail­ure to have a com­pe­tent, trust­wor­thy law en­force­ment would not fos­ter con­fi­dence with in­ter­na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence agen­cies which could ham­per ef­fec­tive­ness in fight­ing crime.

He al­so took jabs at mem­bers of the UNC, as he ques­tioned their rep­u­ta­tions and com­pe­tence in lead­ing the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, as he ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of bar­ring leg­is­la­tion pre­sent­ed by the gov­ern­ment as part of a strat­e­gy for crime to wors­en.

"They be­lieve that if crime re­mains a front burn­er is­sue, they will re­turn to hap­pen and that ought not hap­pen."

As of Fri­day morn­ing, there were 97 mur­ders com­pared to 135 for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

Gon­za­les added that while he was still not sat­is­fied with the num­ber of mur­ders, the 30 per cent de­cline was an achieve­ment and cred­it­ed the State of Emer­gency for this im­prove­ment.