Akash Sama­roo

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds again con­firmed yes­ter­day that he’s not go­ing any­where, de­spite nu­mer­ous calls from sev­er­al sec­tors of so­ci­ety and the Op­po­si­tion for him to do so due to the spi­ralling crime and record mur­der rate.

“No, no, no! I am con­fi­dent that I am con­duct­ing my man­date, I know what my re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are and I am ex­e­cut­ing them, every one of them,” Hinds said at the Christ­mas on The Hill chil­dren’s treat at So­gren Trace in Laven­tille.

Guardian Me­dia re­mind­ed Hinds that it was on­ly on Mon­day (De­cem­ber 19) that he had said on com­ing in­to of­fice in April last year, he knew that 70 per cent of so­ci­ety did not want to see him suc­ceed. He even lament­ed that it would be nice if he had so­ci­ety’s full back­ing.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the Min­is­ter seem­ing­ly back­tracked a bit.

“You don’t have to hold me to the fig­ure,” he replied, say­ing that he meant it was the Op­po­si­tion and crim­i­nals who don’t sup­port his ef­forts.

Asked if he, in fact, does be­lieve he has the full sup­port of the pop­u­la­tion, Hinds said, “Yea I do, I do, but I know there are peo­ple en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty of all de­scrip­tions, white col­lar crime, blue colour crime, red blood crime who do not want us to suc­ceed.”

Hinds stressed that it is the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) that sole­ly has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­vent crimes, in­clud­ing mur­der.

But with the mur­der rate edg­ing clos­er to the un­prece­dent­ed 600 mark in the Min­is­ter’s first full year in charge of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, he was asked to as­sess his per­for­mance.

“I don’t rate my per­for­mance; I work and I do what I am man­dat­ed to do,” he said.

How­ev­er, Hinds ad­mit­ted that he too is not pleased with the num­ber of mur­ders this year.

“No sen­si­ble right-think­ing cit­i­zen wants to know that we, Trinidad and To­ba­go, have killed so many of us. A cou­ple days’ ago, some­one sent me a What­sApp mes­sage say­ing ‘Oh my God, you mean we are los­ing 600 cit­i­zens for the year?’ and I replied ‘yes, un­for­tu­nate­ly, yes’ but who is do­ing that? It is we the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the most part who are do­ing it. It is sad but it is the re­al­i­ty for the time be­ing.”

Hinds de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “hor­ri­ble and se­ri­ous” and said he con­tin­ues to work with the TTPS to pro­vide them with the re­sources they need, which, he said, is his man­date.

“Right now, I am work­ing with a pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion rep­re­sent­ed here to­day, they have promised to use their con­tacts in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to bring cer­tain skills to bear which I will al­low them, once the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er finds it ap­pro­pri­ate, to share with the po­lice ser­vice in terms of cer­tain el­e­ments of it and we all have to work to­geth­er.”

Hinds then told mem­bers of the me­dia that they were over­look­ing a pos­i­tive which gives him en­cour­age­ment go­ing in­to 2023.

“It may have es­caped you, but it hasn’t es­caped me that our de­tec­tion rate is head­ing north, the po­lice are cer­tain­ly mak­ing greater head­way. You would see the oth­er day there was a mur­der of a woman and child in a car and as they were es­cap­ing from the scene, be­cause of the strate­gic di­rect ac­tive pa­trol sys­tems that are in place now, they were able to in­ter­cept the sus­pects on the very day short­ly af­ter the of­fence.”

Hinds al­so sought to dis­miss al­le­ga­tions made by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) that the mur­der toll is ac­tu­al­ly high­er and sta­tis­tics are be­ing sup­pressed.

“I have to re­ly on the of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics and I re­ly on the da­ta re­ceived by the TTPS, so if I have to hear from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, as I do, and then hear from the chat­ter­box­es, I will re­ly on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s word, and I do.”