RYAN BA­CHOO

Con­tent Dis­tri­b­u­tion Ed­i­tor

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has told re­gion­al Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers they must im­prove on crime-fight­ing tech­niques and look to new ways to bat­tle the scourge of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty across the Caribbean now.

Hinds made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing of the 37th An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) and Con­fer­ence of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (AC­CP) at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, which is themed Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime: A grow­ing threat to re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Hinds warned the re­gion­al Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers that or­gan­ised crime is the biggest chal­lenge fac­ing them at present.

“The or­gan­ised crime net­works have formed al­liances with care­ful­ly nur­tured and se­lect­ed play­ers. They use their vast amount of mon­ey and pow­er to cor­rupt crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions in our coun­tries….”

He re­vealed that eight Caribbean na­tions are cur­rent­ly with­in the top 20 of the world’s most dan­ger­ous coun­tries based on the high rates of homi­cides per capi­ta.

He al­so said every day in Cari­com, rough­ly 14 peo­ple are killed due to con­flicts, in­ter-per­son­al vi­o­lence and the rate of Cari­com deaths in the mem­ber states was al­most three times the glob­al av­er­age. This, he re­vealed, is fu­elled by firearms, which are used in 75 per cent of all homi­cides across the Caribbean. Of the 605 mur­ders T&T record­ed in 2022, Hinds said 87 per cent of them were car­ried out with firearms.

He said cy­ber-crimes such as on­line scams, ran­somware and com­pro­mised busi­ness e-mails are in­creas­ing­ly prob­lem­at­ic in the re­gion and the web is now a fa­cil­i­ta­tor for transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime with­in the re­gion.

“It is im­per­a­tive that our re­gion fo­cus­es on build­ing do­main aware­ness, cy­ber, air and mar­itime, since these three do­mains are the main fa­cil­i­ta­tors of trans-na­tion­al or­gan­ised crime,” Hinds told the au­di­ence.

He added, “In or­der to com­bat this (or­gan­ised crime), there has to be a sys­tems-wide ap­proach, in­clu­sive of pre­ven­tion, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing to ad­dress in­tel­li­gence and in­ves­ti­ga­tion, a ro­bust leg­isla­tive frame­work to have up­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion to sup­port the ju­di­cial process, a strength­ened crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and a strength­ened cor­rec­tions process which sup­ports the im­por­tant busi­ness of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion.”

Hinds al­so point­ed to ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion, which he said con­tin­ues to be a threat to the re­gion. He said mi­gra­tion routes are shift­ing and the Caribbean is now be­ing seen as a means of reach­ing the fi­nal des­ti­na­tion, which is the Unit­ed States.

Hinds al­so said, “The trans­ship­ment of co­caine is al­so in­creas­ing and the routes are more di­verse than ever, with more co­caine head­ing to Eu­rope through very cre­ative and var­ied routes.”

Hinds said or­gan­ised crime must be dealt with, as it is hav­ing a se­ri­ous im­pact on the re­gion’s young peo­ple.

“It is the main prob­lem be­cause it has spawned crime busi­ness mod­els and made a big busi­ness of crime. It has pro­fes­sion­alised it, made it transna­tion­al, gen­er­at­ing huge in­come streams from drug traf­fick­ing to ex­tor­tion and it has made the crim­i­nal net­works pow­er­ful play­ers in a num­ber of our lit­tle com­mu­ni­ties around this re­gion.”

Ear­li­er, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher led the pa­rade of re­gion­al com­mis­sion­ers at the start of the con­fer­ence and de­liv­ered the wel­come ad­dress. She said she ex­pects “an­i­mat­ed dis­cours­es and en­gag­ing high qual­i­ty pre­sen­ta­tions” through­out the course of the week-long ex­er­cise.

In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Po­lice (IACP) pres­i­dent John Let­teney, who is al­so the Chief of Po­lice in Thomasville, Geor­gia, al­so told col­leagues there is now greater need for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies giv­en the com­plex­i­ty of fight­ing crime.

“To suc­cess­ful­ly in­ter­vene in transna­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty, it is im­per­a­tive that agen­cies world­wide are able to com­mu­ni­cate and col­lab­o­rate against po­ten­tial threats. As crim­i­nals be­come more so­phis­ti­cat­ed across our bor­ders, our means of en­force­ment must fol­low suit,” Let­teney said.

Among those from around the re­gion at­tend­ing the con­fer­ence are Com­mis­sion­ers Richard Boyce (Bar­ba­dos), Dar­rin Si­mons (Bermu­da), Ma­jor Gen­er­al Antony An­der­son (Ja­maica) and the re­gion’s oth­er cur­rent fe­male Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Crusi­ta Descartes-Pelius (St Lu­cia).