Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

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.