DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed States and Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ments are press­ing full steam ahead with the es­tab­lish­ment of a vet­ted unit for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). This fol­lows the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) Spe­cial Agent Denise Fos­ter along­side US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond.

It comes more than a year af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the unit’s for­ma­tion, which will iden­ti­fy tar­gets, col­lect ev­i­dence, share in­tel­li­gence, and fa­cil­i­tate pros­e­cu­tions through both the US and T&T ju­di­cial sys­tems.

Row­ley, on Ju­ly 15, 2023, told Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sup­port­ers that the vet­ted unit would in­ves­ti­gate cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. He was speak­ing dur­ing a meet­ing on the San Fer­nan­do prom­e­nade.

“I am telling this coun­try that we are pre­pared to pay ex­tra to po­lice of­fi­cers in those vet­ted units if they will main­tain their in­tegri­ty and help us to root out the crim­i­nals in the po­lice ser­vice, in the cus­toms, in im­mi­gra­tion, and in the Par­lia­ment,” Row­ley said.

In Jan­u­ary, the Prime Min­is­ter flew to Wash­ing­ton to dis­cuss the vet­ted units, de­clar­ing that progress was be­ing made. He re­peat­ed this in April.

There was much furore fol­low­ing his an­nounce­ment last year. For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs warned that the of­fi­cers should be se­lect­ed on their mer­it and not for mon­e­tary rea­sons, while a for­mer se­nior of­fi­cer said it would not be a “quick fix.”

Po­lice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son ques­tioned why cops were be­ing sin­gled out, de­scrib­ing Row­ley’s com­ments about cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers as “reck­less”.

Yes­ter­day, when Guardian Me­dia was in­vit­ed to speak one-on-one with a DEA agent on the vet­ted unit, lit­tle in­for­ma­tion was dis­closed.

Asked how much the US would in­vest fi­nan­cial­ly and the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers ex­pect­ed to be vet­ted, Fos­ter, who is in charge of the DEA’s Caribbean Di­vi­sion, di­vulged lit­tle.

“As far as the num­bers ... not re­al­ly pre­pared to talk about that. What I can tell you (is) it will be at a val­ue for the po­lice de­part­ment and for the coun­try.”

Al­though it is un­clear who the unit will re­port to, Fos­ter is op­ti­mistic that this col­lab­o­ra­tion will ben­e­fit T&T.

“I un­der­stand the con­cerns, but what I can tell you is that, for us, the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion, is this ... again, it’s the op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to work with the po­lice de­part­ment to help the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go with crime, and that’s what we’re here for, to pro­vide those re­sources and men­tor­ship,” she said.

Fos­ter did not dis­close ex­act­ly when work to es­tab­lish the unit would com­mence, though she as­sured that the process would be­gin af­ter the sign­ing of the MOU.

Com­ment­ing on the lat­est steps to es­tab­lish the vet­ted units, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith de­scribed it as “wel­come news.” He said it should be bereft of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, which he al­leged oc­curred in oth­er po­lice units.

“Po­lit­i­cal in­volve­ment can to­tal­ly ma­nip­u­late a vet­ting process. So, I am ask­ing the coun­try to un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate that what the US is do­ing is what is re­quired. Had this been done four years ago, the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team would have still prob­a­bly been here, and we would have not been see­ing the type of kid­nap­pings, home in­va­sions, ex­tor­tions, and crime that present­ly ex­ists in this coun­try,” Grif­fith said.

Mean­while, in a state­ment to the me­dia fol­low­ing the sign­ing, Hinds said the es­tab­lish­ment of the vet­ted unit sig­ni­fies the gov­ern­ment’s recog­ni­tion that no sin­gle agency can tack­le the com­plex is­sue of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

“It re­quires a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort that draws on the strengths and ex­per­tise of both the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the DEA. Through this part­ner­ship, we will not on­ly im­prove our op­er­a­tional readi­ness but al­so fos­ter a cul­ture of co­op­er­a­tion and trust among our agen­cies,” he said.

US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond said it would al­so em­pow­er T&T’s law en­force­ment to “op­er­ate in part­ner­ship with US se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies at an un­prece­dent­ed lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ex­per­tise.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter Hinds and the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land for more de­tails but they did not re­spond.