Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has con­firmed there will be col­lab­o­ra­tion with Unit­ed States law en­force­ment agen­cies, in­clud­ing the FBI and CIA, on se­cu­ri­ty for this year’s Car­ni­val.

Hinds, how­ev­er, did not in­di­cate the ex­act roles the of­fi­cers of the re­spec­tive agen­cies will play.

“Col­lab­o­ra­tion with our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners is crit­i­cal to this, you would have heard the as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er say that they took the time to brief the diplo­mats, the diplo­mat­ic corps in Trinidad, be­cause they are spokesper­sons for their coun­tries here and they are the pur­vey­ors of in­for­ma­tion about our coun­try there and they took time and I com­mend the po­lice for that, to sen­si­tise them for the work that we are do­ing so they would un­der­stand that Trinidad is a safe place,” Hinds said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments for Car­ni­val 2024, which in­clud­ed As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Win­ston Ma­haraj, Gold Com­man­der Kelvern Thomp­son, Act­ing DCP Samp­son, of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, and T&T De­fence Force Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer Colonel Collin Milling­ton.

Hinds’ com­ment came days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed a del­e­ga­tion he led to Wash­ing­ton a week ago met with of­fi­cials at the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) and Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA).

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing last Fri­day, Dr Row­ley re­port­ed that Gov­ern­ment will re­ceive sup­port from US law en­force­ment to deal with cer­tain for­eign crim­i­nals who are lik­ing T&T.

Asked about whether the as­sis­tance of the for­eign agen­cies ex­tend­ing to safe­ty over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, Hinds said, “In that col­lab­o­ra­tion, we have been promised the help of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, and that in­cludes all of their law en­force­ment agen­cies, of which the FBI is one, so to an­swer your ques­tion in short, ab­solute­ly yes.”

Pressed fur­ther on threats posed by in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nals, Hinds said the is­sue will be ad­dressed at a me­dia brief­ing host­ed by Dr Row­ley to­day.

Colonel Milling­ton al­so said the is­sue of cit­i­zens wear­ing cam­ou­flage cloth­ing con­tin­ues to en­gage the au­thor­i­ties. This comes af­ter pho­tos showed par­ty­go­ers wear­ing cloth­ing re­sem­bling tac­ti­cal wear at the re­cent Army fete.

“The is­sue of cam­ou­flage and the pub­lic wear­ing cam­ou­flage is an age old one. The reg­u­la­tions state that the pub­lic is not sup­posed to wear any­thing sim­i­lar or is di­rect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the De­fence Force uni­form and the De­fence Force, cus­toms and po­lice con­tin­ue to en­force the law in re­la­tion to this.”

Ref­er­enc­ing the De­fence Act, Hinds added, “Let me in­ter­sperse here again, it has to be part of their cloth­ing or ap­par­el. It means if a hand­bag is in cam­ou­flage, that is not cloth­ing or ap­par­el and it must so close­ly re­sem­ble, so if it ap­pears in pink or yel­low or brown, it doesn’t close­ly re­sem­ble.”

Mean­while, the Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Win­ston Ma­haraj shut down re­ports of sick-outs by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son over back­pay is­sues.

“I want to de­bunk that myth im­me­di­ate­ly, that is not the case. It is a mis­con­strued per­cep­tion that has been per­pet­u­at­ed in the pub­lic do­main and those who know bet­ter should say bet­ter,” Ma­haraj said.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee last Wednes­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher con­firmed that out­stand­ing back­pay will be made to po­lice of­fi­cers by the end of Feb­ru­ary.

Ma­haraj ex­plained the de­lay in the pay­ment process.

“It is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions to be processed in quick time by a small group that has been aug­ment­ed by our broth­ers and sis­ters from the var­i­ous law en­force­ment agen­cies. They have been work­ing on week­ends, pub­lic hol­i­days, ex­tend­ed hours, above and be­yond the call to process this sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions.”

Ma­haraj said in an ef­fort to sus­tain a high po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, po­lice of­fi­cers on va­ca­tion will al­so be called out. Built in­to their Car­ni­val plan, he said, will be a con­tin­gency plan in the event of ab­sen­teeism. Al­so among the tai­lored ap­proach to en­sur­ing a crime-free Car­ni­val, were strate­gies to deal with gang vi­o­lence. “The strate­gies em­ployed at this time will in­ten­si­fy in the pe­ri­od lead­ing up to Car­ni­val it­self. I don’t want to dis­close too much about po­lice strate­gies but it is a con­cern, pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers, those who are in the sys­tem, those who en­gage in that kind of gang war­fare, that cul­ture, we have our eyes on that,” he said.

ACP Ma­haraj al­so in­di­cat­ed that po­lice re­sources, in­clud­ing body cam­eras, will be utilised dur­ing ex­er­cis­es over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

“All as­sets that are avail­able to the po­lice will be used in­clu­sive of body-worn cam­eras. I will lev­el with the me­dia and pub­lic, the num­ber of cam­eras avail­able in re­la­tion to the num­ber of po­lice is at vari­ants but I will add that there is suf­fi­cient to pro­vide our front­line of­fi­cers with, and they have been in­struct­ed to wear these cam­eras switched on, there is an in­struc­tion.” Dur­ing last week’s JSC, Hare­wood-Christo­pher was ad­vised to rein in of­fi­cers who don’t wear body cam­eras, in­clud­ing dis­ci­plin­ing those who dis­re­gard us­ing them.