Gail Alexan­der

This coun­try has dan­ger­ous gangs, whether they are “Ras­ta City”, “ABG”, “Six­es”, “Mus­lims” and all oth­er so-called gangs, and they are cre­at­ing hav­oc, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

He said this dur­ing Wednes­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Bail Amend­ment (Ex­ten­sion) Bill.

Hinds said po­lice ini­tia­tives con­tin­ue on gangs and gang-re­lat­ed of­fences and 90 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed in the last four-and-a-half years un­der the An­ti-Gang Act, adding cer­tain train­ing is on for the spe­cial re­sponse teams on this as­pect.

Hinds said the bill wasn’t about him, the Gov­ern­ment or Op­po­si­tion but was a mat­ter for the Po­lice Ser­vice to pro­tect the peo­ple and he stood as an emis­sary on be­half of the peo­ple he rep­re­sent­ed and the pub­lic.

“This (bill) is to deal with re­peat of­fend­ers who kill us, rape us, burn our busi­ness­es, kid­nap our fam­i­ly and de­mand mon­ey with men­aces!” he said.

Hinds said the TTPS Crim­i­nal Records sta­tis­tics showed 116 peo­ple were de­nied bail over the bill’s 2019-2022 ex­is­tence. Al­so, 79 who had crim­i­nal records for se­ri­ous of­fences and were charged for an­oth­er were re­fused bail.

He said it’s fact T&T has, like oth­er coun­tries, be­come a dan­ger­ous place and peo­ple were there­fore at se­vere risk. He said he re­ceived re­ports yes­ter­day on de­tec­tion of a ma­jor co­caine find on T&T’s shore and a re­port about three AR-15 weapons. He not­ed the TTPS’s gun re­trieval ex­er­cise tar­get­ing “many thou­sands of il­le­gal guns sneaked in by peo­ple.”

But he not­ed crim­i­nals work 25 hours dai­ly and con­se­quent­ly, he’d de­mand­ed more of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

Hinds list­ed guns found (2, 820), gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders (1,181), gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders with firearms from 2015 to date (1,159), firearms found and seized be­tween 2009 and 2022 (8,831), firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences from 2009 (24,574), and ar­rests for firearms be­tween 2010 to 2022 (1,984 over 2019-2022).

He said the guns in­clud­ed about eight from his Laven­tille West con­stituen­cy.

“Where peo­ple called me and tell me, ‘look they want to get de rid of this’ and want to change their life and I re­port­ed to the po­lice and the po­lice took ac­tion...I did that in the pub­lic in­ter­est and I’m proud of it!”

Rub­bish­ing UNC claims that T&T lacks DNA fa­cil­i­ties, Hinds list­ed pathol­o­gists, mor­tu­ary work­ers and 21 po­lice bal­lis­tics of­fi­cers. He not­ed 1,225 back­log cas­es cleared up, plus 247 cas­es in­volv­ing po­lice shoot­ings. Cit­ing mat­ters like the shoot­ing death of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Clarence Gilkes, he said when au­thor­i­ties call for in­for­ma­tion, they get it.

Some 3,033 firearm hold­ers got pro­cess­ing. Hinds dis­missed UNC con­cern about some be­ing de­nied on mere sus­pi­cion.

“Tell (that to) the women who get raped....and the per­son who lost their two sons re­cent­ly,” he said.

He not­ed re­fur­bished cells with air-con­di­tion­ing, prop­er ven­ti­la­tion, light­ing and toi­lets. Hinds dis­agreed the bill was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.