Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has dis­missed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s calls for laws to deal with home in­va­sion sim­i­lar to the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion in the Unit­ed States.

This is be­cause he says the laws cur­rent­ly on T&T’s books deal ad­e­quate­ly with an in­di­vid­ual’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect them­selves and their prop­er­ty.

“We have laws that deal with the ques­tion of self-de­fence, where per­sons are ex­pect­ed to use rea­son­able force in all cir­cum­stances,” Hinds said fol­low­ing a lun­cheon host­ed by the Ro­tary Club of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. (See page 7)

“That is the prin­ci­ple that guides us. We have seen the ex­pe­ri­ence of oth­ers and as we un­der­stand it, the laws and the phi­los­o­phy that we prac­tice in terms of self-de­fence are quite enough for us to re­spond, be­cause there are many home in­va­sions where the oc­cu­pants of the house got the bet­ter hand of the in­trud­ers. There are some cas­es where in­trud­ers have been killed in the bed­room of the oc­cu­pant and the own­er of the house and those per­sons were not pros­e­cut­ed.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the sug­ges­tion re­cent­ly as the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced a spike in home in­va­sions, say­ing it would be one of her par­ty’s moves to give cit­i­zens an edge against the ban­dits.

How­ev­er, Hinds yes­ter­day said there is no need to make any new laws.

“There’s some­thing known as jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide, there’s some­thing known as self-de­fence, and the cur­rent laws and the prin­ci­ples on which they are set are, in our view for the time be­ing, quite ad­e­quate to deal with those is­sues. As for law en­force­ment, we are try­ing, and the po­lice ser­vice that is, to get ..., well, you saw their re­ac­tion to these home in­va­sions in re­cent times.”

He added, “In every sin­gle case with­in re­cent times, the po­lice were able to in­ter­cept the crim­i­nals, mov­ing away from the scene and in some cas­es in their en­coun­ters with them, un­for­tu­nate­ly, per­sons would have died but the po­lice are now mov­ing based on the plans and the strate­gies that they are im­ple­ment­ing, some of which I learned up to yes­ter­day, is to go fur­ther up­stream to see whether they could pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing in the first place and this is why they are look­ing at pro­lif­ic and pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers, and they are tar­get­ing them long be­fore they get a chance to come out here to hurt you or me.”

Al­so asked about Aranguez-based Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj’s claims that ur­ban youth from the East-West cor­ri­dor were tar­get­ing East In­di­ans in his com­mu­ni­ty, Hinds said, “As a hu­man per­son liv­ing in this beau­ti­ful Re­pub­lic, where we have all re­li­gions, all strains of the hu­man fam­i­ly, I have long prac­ticed re­spect­ing all, ho­n­our­ing all, dis­crim­i­nat­ing against none.

“Al­though I know I have been dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, I have cho­sen as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple to dis­crim­i­nate against none and to do and say noth­ing to in­cense and in­flu­ence any feel­ings or thoughts, or ac­tions along those lines. I would pre­fer to fo­cus on what is in front of me now, the busi­ness of deal­ing with crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He added, “We have some colours for them. We have red blood street crime and we have white-colour crime, we have blue-colour crime. Those are the colours I am fo­cused on for the time be­ing, be­cause it is a prob­lem to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and I am de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue to ex­e­cute that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

On calls for the Gov­ern­ment to meet with the Op­po­si­tion Leader and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith to for­mu­late a crime plan, Hinds said, “We are very aware and mind­ful of de­ceit and de­cep­tion and treach­ery and back­bit­ing and back­step­ping and back­slid­ing. In ad­di­tion to that, we know the mar­ket when we see them. The way the law works and the way a so­ci­ety that is re­spond­ing to crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty and the com­plex way in which that is, laws are al­ways re­viewed. New leg­isla­tive agen­das are set de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances.” — With re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton