BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day called on cit­i­zens to use their phones to record any breach­es of the coun­try’s bor­ders.

He was speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence host­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain.

“There is no such thing as the per­fect crime. When these boats come in, we as cit­i­zens love to pull out our phones and take pho­tographs. How of­ten have we seen a pho­to­graph of a ves­sel and you get the name of the ves­sel?” he asked.

Grif­fith said it is very dif­fi­cult for law en­force­ment or for the state to as­sist in bor­der se­cu­ri­ty if cit­i­zens do not pro­vide the sup­port need­ed.

He said there were hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent il­le­gal ports and un­less cit­i­zens were will­ing to come for­ward, the au­thor­i­ties had to pa­trol ar­eas in Moru­ga, To­co, Ica­cos, Ma­yaro, Erin, all along the south­west­ern penin­su­lar, the south­ern penin­su­lar, Ch­aguara­mas, all around To­ba­go and the north coast.

Stat­ing that there was some lack of vest­ed in­ter­est by cit­i­zens, Grif­fith said: “But all of these cit­i­zens in the ar­eas that I speak about, they go silent. The bat­ter­ies on their phones die ap­par­ent­ly when these ves­sels en­ter. Not one pho­to­graph have we ever seen of a ves­sel with the name? Not one time have we seen that we do have rogue el­e­ments in the Po­lice Ser­vice. Where is the pho­to­graph of the po­lice ve­hi­cle that is ac­com­pa­ny­ing and es­cort­ing these in­di­vid­u­als when they land? Where are the pho­tos and the names of the peo­ple who as­sist in aid­ing and abet­ting for the il­le­gal en­try?” he asked.

He said when in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in fa­cil­i­tat­ing bor­der breach­es were caught and ap­pre­hend­ed, they were usu­al­ly peo­ple with gold chains hang­ing to their stom­achs, claim­ing they were fish­er­men as though they were catch­ing gold­fish.

“When they are caught and even when you go to their fu­ner­als you hear cries in Span­ish ac­cents and Tri­ni ac­cents be­cause these men are seen as the Robin Hoods in these com­mu­ni­ties. They are not the Robin Hoods, Trinidad and To­ba­go. These in­di­vid­u­als have be­come the cat­a­lyst to­wards the biggest prob­lem we have in this coun­try…one of the biggest which is il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion,” Grif­fith warned.

He said some have al­so be­come the cat­a­lysts to­wards ma­jor crime. And il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion where there were 120,000 out of 700,000 adults il­le­gal­ly in T&T, which could lead to a ma­jor is­sue for crime in a coun­try.

He re­it­er­at­ed his ap­peal to cit­i­zens to help, en­cour­ag­ing them to use their phones to start record­ing ves­sels when they are com­ing in, pro­vide the names of the play­ers, and the po­lice ve­hi­cles in­volved in es­cort­ing such groups.

“We are do­ing a lot and we are go­ing to push back. But what I am ask­ing for is the sup­port of the pub­lic. In­stead of just be­ing the arm­chair crit­ic to state about the bor­ders be­ing porous, you need to pro­vide that sup­port to help us so we could help you,” said Grif­fith.

His state­ments were backed up by Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Com­modore Dar­ryl Daniel, who was al­so present at yes­ter­day’s con­fer­ence. Daniel said: “There is a net­work that is fa­cil­i­tat­ing this and I would em­ploy the me­dia and the gen­er­al pub­lic to work at that chal­lenge be­cause these cit­i­zens of ours who are fa­cil­i­tat­ing that are putting us, the oth­er cit­i­zens and them­selves in dan­ger.”

He added, “Be­cause some­body fa­cil­i­tat­ed in­to be­ing traf­ficked in­to the coun­try does not wear a badge that tells you ‘I have COVID, I have TB, I have any­thing, and they now come in­to our sys­tem, we don’t know that they are in the sys­tem or bring­ing what­ev­er they might be bring­ing or not bring­ing as the case may be.”

He said while there was a hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­pect in­volved in some cas­es, it was the busi­ness of the au­thor­i­ties to put things in place to pro­tect the coun­try’s le­git­i­mate cit­i­zens first.

He re­it­er­at­ed Grif­fith’s call to the cit­i­zen­ry to come for­ward and speak out.