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Monday, February 24, 2025

Hinds praises Crime Stoppers after 25 years, but insists ...

'More can be done to fight criminals'

by

Shane Superville
147 days ago
20240930
Crime Stoppers director Darrin Carmichael, centre, receives a plaque from CBLA Crime Stoppers Foundation regional chairman Alexander MacDonald, right, and regional director Alejo Campos during the Crime Stoppers T&T’s 25th Anniversary Gala at The BRIX Hotel, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday.

Crime Stoppers director Darrin Carmichael, centre, receives a plaque from CBLA Crime Stoppers Foundation regional chairman Alexander MacDonald, right, and regional director Alejo Campos during the Crime Stoppers T&T’s 25th Anniversary Gala at The BRIX Hotel, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday.

ANISTO ALVES

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has com­mend­ed Crime Stop­pers T&T for their ef­forts in crime-fight­ing, but has al­so high­light­ed the need for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the pub­lic and au­thor­i­ties to quell ram­pant crime.

Hinds made the re­marks dur­ing a cel­e­bra­tion din­ner at the Brix Ho­tel, St Ann's, on Sat­ur­day night.

Re­fer­ring to da­ta gath­ered by the or­gan­i­sa­tion that over 400 guns were seized due to tips passed on to Crime Stop­pers, Hinds said the group had con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this coun­try's fight against crime.

He, how­ev­er, called on all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the pub­lic, to re­dou­ble their ef­forts by work­ing with the po­lice to dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works and op­er­a­tions.

"We in T&T, I think al­to­geth­er we have a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty deficit. I think that to­geth­er as a so­ci­ety, much more can be done and more par­tic­u­lar­ly about the is­sue of crime.

"I be­lieve that we can do more in re­spond­ing to crime as a na­tion," Hinds said.

"I pledge that I will con­tin­ue to ex­ert best ef­forts to en­sur­ing that they are re­sources, they are trained, they are ef­fi­cient in the ser­vices that fall to them."

Hinds al­so took note that dur­ing Crime Stop­pers' 25 years of op­er­a­tion in T&T, the na­ture and dy­nam­ics of crim­i­nal­i­ty had sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed in some as­pects.

Re­fer­ring to mur­ders typ­i­cal­ly be­ing used with knives, cut­lass­es or pis­tols 25 years ago, Hinds lament­ed that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of high-pow­ered au­to­mat­ic weapons dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creased the risk posed to so­ci­ety.

"With a 9 mm weapon, if the as­sailant man­ages three or four rounds at his tar­get, by the time he is aim­ing for some­one else, if he in­tend­ed to shoot any­one else, they would have had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to flee, to flinch, to take cov­er, but to­day with the au­to­mat­ic weapon, the as­sailant works an arc and any­thing in­side of that is for him fair game, but for us very dirty and hor­ren­dous con­se­quences."

De­spite this, Hinds al­so com­mend­ed the work of the po­lice in re­spond­ing to re­ports of a shoot­ing at Ser­raneau Road, Bel­mont, on Fri­day.

Po­lice re­spond­ing to re­ports of a dri­ve-by shoot­ing at­tack on Cur­tis John and Ta­far­wa Roberts in the com­mu­ni­ty, found two sus­pects hours lat­er hid­ing in a drain near the St Fran­cois Girls' Col­lege. One of the sus­pects was killed when he opened fire on of­fi­cers, while the oth­er was de­tained.


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