Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has spent $54 bil­lion on the coun­try's na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty over the last eight years, with at least $828 mil­lions of that fig­ure go­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), yet cit­i­zens are gripped by fear and forced to watch over their shoul­ders in their homes and pub­lic spaces as crim­i­nals have be­come more brazen in their at­tacks. Not even ba­bies and tod­dlers are es­cap­ing the gun­men's fire.

Even Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, has de­clared to the Sun­day Guardian that he un­der­stood the trau­ma and fear that cit­i­zens are liv­ing un­der and said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing on so­lu­tions.

Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

 The sit­u­a­tion has be­come so grave that the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has re­quest­ed that Par­lia­ment's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Se­cu­ri­ty con­vene in an emer­gency ses­sion to in­quire about what is be­ing done to ad­dress the crime prob­lem. UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in an in­ter­view with a tele­vi­sion sta­tion last week called the crime surge a "se­ri­ous and grave mat­ter" and chas­tised the Gov­ern­ment for its in­ac­tion and lack of a plan. In a re­sponse to Mooni­lal on Oc­to­ber 26, chair­man of the JSC on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land as­sured the re­quest would be dis­cussed at the next meet­ing of the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee.

The bil­lions in al­lo­ca­tion to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the an­nu­al bud­gets would usu­al­ly cov­er the TTPS, the T&T Prison Ser­vice, T&T De­fence Force, and the T&T Fire Ser­vice to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens.

The re­sources al­lo­cat­ed specif­i­cal­ly to the TTPS have been sig­nif­i­cant. Be­tween 2016 to the most re­cent al­lo­ca­tion for fis­cal 2023, the Gov­ern­ment al­lot­ted at least $828.14 mil­lions.

But de­spite the bil­lions spent by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the fight against crime, T&T is the eighth most vi­o­lent coun­try in the world based on some in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ings. A crim­i­nol­o­gist said the present sit­u­a­tion shows that we can­not man­age the crime sit­u­a­tion in this tiny coun­try and at­trib­uted this to years of ne­glect in terms of fo­cus­ing on the pre­ven­ta­tive as­pect.

With the crime wave con­tin­u­ing un­abat­ed through­out the coun­try, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment has faced wide­spread crit­i­cism for its han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, hav­ing promised in its 2015 elec­tion cam­paign and man­i­festo to strength­en the TTPS and re­duce the coun­try's crime rate.

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

Last week­end alone, the coun­try record­ed an alarm­ing 15 mur­ders in 72 hours. Up to Fri­day evening, there were 498 mur­ders. But be­tween Fri­day night and yes­ter­day, the coun­try record­ed an­oth­er four mur­ders, tak­ing the toll to 502.

Apart from brazen killings in pub­lic spaces and at peo­ple's homes in broad day­light and night, there have been vi­o­lent home in­va­sions, rapes, rob­beries and kid­nap­pings. No one is be­ing spared, the young and old have be­come tar­gets, from big busi­ness op­er­a­tors to the man hus­tling on the streets and in every part of the coun­try.

Just last week, a fa­ther and moth­er were shot dead in their bed while shield­ing their young ba­by from the killer or killers' bul­lets at their home in St James; in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, a 15-year-old boy was killed and stuffed in a la­trine in Gol­con­da; in Oc­to­ber, a nine-year-old school­boy, Jo­mol Mod­este was gunned down in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing at Africa Recre­ation Ground in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas; and in Feb­ru­ary in San Fer­nan­do, crim­i­nals robbed a jew­ellery store and while es­cap­ing shot and killed 33-year-old se­cu­ri­ty guard Andy Ho­sein. In Au­gust, two pa­trons who were sit­ting out­side the Res­i­dence night­club in Port-of-Spain were shot and killed by a brazen gun­man who opened fire while stand­ing out­side the es­tab­lish­ment. Pig farmer Wayne Bowen, 70, was beat­en mer­ci­less­ly, hog-tied, sprayed with in­sec­ti­cide and set on fire by three gun-tot­ing ban­dits who in­vad­ed his Cu­mu­to Road home in May this year.

McDonald Jacob

Liv­ing in fear

Cit­i­zens are cry­ing out for ur­gent help and want to see some sort of se­ri­ous crime plan put in­to ef­fect to stop the crim­i­nals in their tracks. Ac­knowl­edg­ing the at­mos­phere of fear in the coun­try, Hinds, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, re­count­ed his meet­ing with En­ter­prise res­i­dents, who told him how ter­ri­fied they have be­come.

"I went to En­ter­prise Vil­lage with the Chief of De­fence Staff and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice fol­low­ing the mur­der of Jo­mol Mod­este and I in­ter­faced with the com­mu­ni­ty in En­ter­prise. I walked for half an hour and res­i­dents told me, al­most every house of the dozens of hous­es I saw had been af­fect­ed by a mur­der.

"I met a woman who was born and grew up in En­ter­prise and she told me de­spite the tur­moil she still felt com­fort­able walk­ing in her dis­trict ex­cept for last week af­ter Jo­mol was killed. She said when she left her house to go to the su­per­mar­ket in the neigh­bour­hood, she said every step she took she felt as if every bul­let was about to en­ter her back. So I un­der­stand the fear."

Ac­cord­ing to Hinds, il­le­gal firearms are used in 87 per cent of T&T mur­ders and are at the root of the crime prob­lem.

He re­called vis­it­ing the UK's firearms reg­istry two weeks ago and dis­cov­er­ing that out of a pop­u­la­tion of 60 mil­lion, on­ly 1.5 mil­lion firearms li­cences have been is­sued.

"Hand­guns are not on their agen­da at all. Re­cent­ly, Cana­da banned the im­por­ta­tion of hand­guns and a few weeks af­ter, they banned the sale of hand­guns there.

"We have records of over 12,000 il­le­gal firearms run­ning around T&T, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of which are au­to­mat­ic, as­sault, and mil­i­tary-grade weapons. So our firearms re­trieval pol­i­cy is crit­i­cal.

"The gangs are a ma­jor is­sue and the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy as ex­pressed in the An­ti-Gang Law is to tack­le and dis­man­tle gangs."

He al­so spoke about the Gov­ern­ment's at­tempts to pro­tect the bor­ders from in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

"Our bor­der se­cu­ri­ty is our top pri­or­i­ty. We have pur­chased two off­shore pa­trol ves­sels, we are im­prov­ing our sea pa­trol stock, we have im­ple­ment­ed the coastal unit of the TTPS, and we’ve al­so signed on the UN­ODC's AIR­COP and SEA­COP. We have trained per­son­nel and have them work­ing on those pro­grammes, shar­ing in­for­ma­tion with oth­er air and sea ports glob­al­ly. We’ve had suc­cess with the re­cent dis­cov­ery of arms, count­less rounds of am­mu­ni­tion in­to our le­gal ports of en­try in T&T. It shows our tech­niques are sharp­en­ing."

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said that the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing on in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and up­grad­ing the skills of po­lice of­fi­cers and oth­ers in­volved in this area.

"In­tel­li­gence is the lifeblood of what will be­come po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions and de­tec­tion. Giv­en that most of the crimes we deal with have ex­ter­nal in­flu­ences from hu­man traf­fick­ing, drug deal­ing, and drug run­ning, they are transna­tion­al. Very re­cent­ly, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, I, and oth­ers vis­it­ed the supreme in­tel­li­gence agency in the UK, which is the MI6, and we are deep­en­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion with them as well as with the US."

Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment can­not do it alone and called on the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to work with the Gov­ern­ment.

"If we get the sup­port of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, house by house, man by man, as to help­ing law en­force­ment as to where this gun might be in your com­mu­ni­ty, we will suc­ceed. You can al­so go to the Prime Min­is­ter and come to me with the in­for­ma­tion. We have a prob­lem and must fight it. I am op­ti­mistic we can push back the hand­ful of crim­i­nals that has done all this dam­age," he said.

Mooni­lal, speak­ing on the Gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion, said, "We have seen the col­lapse of so­ci­ety un­der crim­i­nal­i­ty and gun vi­o­lence. We have reached a stage where even in rur­al Trinidad we are over­run by ban­dits. We are hear­ing of rob­beries, lar­ce­ny and crim­i­nal be­hav­iour."

He said that at this time the coun­try re­quires lead­er­ship, but added that "The Prime Min­is­ter has clear­ly gone in­to hid­ing."

Mooni­lal said the Prime Min­is­ter should re­move Hinds for his fail­ure in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

A Crime Scene Investigator examines the vehicle in which two Allied Security Services security guards were shot dead during a robbery at the Pennywise Plaza in La Romain last month.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

 T&T ranked high as a vi­o­lent coun­try

Head of the Crim­i­nol­o­gy De­part­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said that de­spite the re­sources spent by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments, T&T is the eighth most vi­o­lent coun­try in the world based on some in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ings.

Just ear­li­er this year, he said, the World Pop­u­la­tion Re­view web­site pub­lished fig­ures per 100,000 peo­ple which placed the coun­try as hav­ing the sixth high­est crime rate glob­al­ly.

"On some of the on­line data­bas­es, T&T ranks in the top ten in terms of vi­o­lent crime. Around the eighth most vi­o­lent in the world. Yet this is a tiny coun­try and we can’t man­age the crime sit­u­a­tion. This can be at­trib­uted to years of ne­glect in terms of fo­cus­ing on the pre­ven­ta­tive as­pect.

"Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have gone be­hind poli­cies that they think are po­lit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar. So they would push more im­pris­on­ment and joint army pa­trols and oth­er things which ap­pear to be tough on crime. But the pre­ven­ta­tive side is the soft­er side, but it is the more im­por­tant di­men­sion like solv­ing so­cial prob­lems like un­em­ploy­ment and school vi­o­lence," Seep­er­sad said.

De­spite the ris­ing crime rate, he re­mains op­ti­mistic that it can be re­duced thanks to the cur­rent Ag Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob's new crime plan and "in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing."

"The new act­ing com­mis­sion­er is push­ing very heav­i­ly for in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing. There is al­so a new ini­tia­tive called Project Rise. There are many com­po­nents to this in­clud­ing deal­ing with gangs and youth vi­o­lence.

"Mr Ja­cob has been in the hot seat very re­cent­ly. The mod­el of in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing where they make pol­i­cy de­ci­sions based on hard da­ta is tak­ing it a step be­yond what has been done be­fore. The TTPS is us­ing da­ta and they have their Comp­Stat meet­ings week­ly. The Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) is in­to da­ta analy­sis and they used dif­fer­ent types of ap­proach­es."

He said this new in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing by the TTPS is very im­por­tant as there is a much deep­er and wider in­te­gra­tion of in­for­ma­tion which means draw­ing from in­tel­li­gence agen­cies, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and oth­er stake­hold­ers like uni­ver­si­ties.

"This would be bring­ing the TTPS to the cut­ting edge of what’s hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly. How­ev­er, this will not hap­pen overnight to the de­gree that we need it to hap­pen. There need to be oth­er things in place like pro­to­cols for shar­ing in­for­ma­tion and da­ta man­age­ment sys­tems ca­pa­ble of record­ing in­for­ma­tion. Al­so, the ca­pac­i­ty to analyse the da­ta to make the right de­ci­sions."

He point­ed out that polic­ing is on­ly one di­men­sion in fight­ing crime.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly it on­ly comes in­to play as a last re­sort. It waits for the crime to hap­pen and on­ly then do they step in. If they want to stop this prob­lem, they have to deal with the fac­tors that are caus­ing the prob­lem in the first place. It’s not with­in the man­date of the TTPS to be pre­ven­ta­tive. There are fam­i­lies with so­cial prob­lems, youths, and drugs, These all play a part in crime. So the TTPS is al­ways over­whelmed. They must be en­gaged on a much broad­er scale with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, and the youths. It must in­volve all stake­hold­ers."

He does not think that the T&T De­fence Force has a role to play in fight­ing crime as he says they have been trained for a dif­fer­ent pur­pose.

"On­ly in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion, they should step in. The in­ter­na­tion­al lit­er­a­ture is clear and the ev­i­dence is clear that mil­i­tary per­son­nel are trained in dif­fer­ent ways for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. Law en­force­ment is part of the civ­il ad­min­is­tra­tion of a coun­try. On­ly un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances, they can ar­rest but these are ex­cep­tion­al like war or nat­ur­al dis­as­ter."

He said UWI was try­ing to get the US-based com­pa­ny DAI Glob­al to come to T&T to do com­mu­ni­ty work in high-risk com­mu­ni­ties which will lead to crime re­duc­tion in the longer term.

"US­AID just award­ed a US$30 mil­lion grant to DAI Glob­al and they will en­gage in a youth, crime, and vi­o­lence ini­tia­tive. They have not as yet made a de­ci­sion. They are tar­get­ing four coun­tries and so far they have iden­ti­fied three coun­tries, their fourth coun­try for con­sid­er­a­tion is T&T. We are try­ing to con­vince US­AID and analysing the stats and show­ing them where the hot spot ar­eas are. It’s grass­roots, com­mu­ni­ty-based work they will do. That’s deal­ing with the root caus­es of crime. It will be a five-year project we need. We’re hop­ing US­AID brings it."

Il­le­gal firearms flood­ing the streets

Com­ment­ing on the rise in brazen crimes, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith ex­pressed the view that the spike would on­ly be re­duced by adopt­ing con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy and mod­ernising the TTPS.

He crit­i­cised the TTPS for hav­ing too many "di­nosaurs" that are fight­ing change, and he ex­pects the crime rate to wors­en be­fore it gets bet­ter.

"They’re afraid to em­brace change and adopt new tech­nol­o­gy. They have now gone back to old-time polic­ing. The PNM Gov­ern­ment al­so does not want to em­brace change and if you politi­cise na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, there will be a spike in crime. The Gov­ern­ment will fail mis­er­ably. Hope­ful­ly, the next Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er will em­brace change," he said.

"In the first year of Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, from Au­gust 2021 to Au­gust 2022, there were 586 mur­ders and this was the high­est in any giv­en year. For 2022 it seems that we will be go­ing to 600 mur­ders. Mr Ja­cob mis­led the coun­try say­ing that there was not an up­surge in crime."

Grif­fith shared the ini­tia­tives that he im­ple­ment­ed as CoP.

"There was Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing and get­ting of­fi­cers to be trained. It was the first time we were able to crack kid­nap­pings, nev­er be­fore had an agency raid­ed places while peo­ple were be­ing held. I al­so set up pre­dic­tive polic­ing. This is us­ing sys­tems whether un­der­cov­er or tech­nol­o­gy and be­ing able to pin­point a crime be­fore it takes place."

He al­so said that un­der his watch, the TTPS stayed abreast of con­tem­po­rary tech­nolo­gies and trends by be­ing so­cial-me­dia savvy.

"I ex­tract­ed this from the New York Po­lice Ser­vice as they had a unit to deal with so­cial me­dia and they were able to pin­point and pre­vent the crime from tak­ing place. Those are the things we did to re­duce crime. I al­so mea­sured po­lice of­fi­cers’ per­for­mance such as GPS on ve­hi­cles, body cam­eras, and dash­board cam­eras."

He blames the high mur­der rate on the il­le­gal firearms that have flood­ed the streets.

"The TTPS has not as­signed one po­lice of­fi­cer to try to stop il­le­gal guns from en­ter­ing the coun­try or to ap­pre­hend the in­di­vid­u­als who have il­le­gal guns. One hun­dred per cent of all mur­ders com­mit­ted have been by il­le­gal firearms," Grif­fith added.

The for­mer CoP ar­gued that scarce re­sources al­lo­cat­ed to the TTPS could not be an ex­cuse for a lack of per­for­mance.

"From 2020 to 2021, when there was a re­duc­tion in every vi­o­lent crime, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance re­duced the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. This meant less ca­pa­bil­i­ty for fu­el, over­time, pa­trols, and main­te­nance of ve­hi­cles and yet we were still able to get the vis­i­bil­i­ty. I ran the TTPS like a busi­ness and I was able to re­duce every sin­gle ex­pense from elec­tric­i­ty to fu­el."

Bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty:

*$10.81 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2015 to 2016

*$7.625 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2016 to 2017

*$6.4 bil­lion for the fis­cal year  2017 to 2018

*$6.120 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2018 to 2019

*$6.44 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2019 to 2020

*$5.227 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2020 to 2021

*$5.664 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2021 to 2022

*$5.798 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2022 to 2023

A to­tal of $54.084 bil­lion

Al­lo­ca­tions for the TTPS (ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) da­ta):

*For 2016, the TTPS re­ceived $148.4 mil­lions

*For 2017, the TTPS re­ceived $75.3 mil­lions

*For 2018, the TTPS re­ceived $94.2 mil­lions

*For 2019, the TTPS re­ceived $28.24 mil­lions

*For 2020, the TTPS re­ceived $56.2 mil­lions for its de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gramme

*For 2021, the TTPS re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of  $107.5 mil­lions

*For 2022, the TTPS re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $176.9 mil­lions

*For 2023, the TTPS re­ceived $141.4 mil­lions

A to­tal of $828.14 mil­lions

Sta­tis­tics from the TTPS's web­site show:

*From Jan­u­ary to Oc­to­ber 2022 (Fri­day) there were 497 mur­ders

*From Jan­u­ary to Oc­to­ber 2022 there were 214 cas­es of rape and oth­er sex­u­al of­fences

*From Jan­u­ary to Oc­to­ber 2022 there were 63 kid­nap­pings

*From Jan­u­ary to Oc­to­ber 2022 there were 1,066 bur­glar­ies and break-ins

*From Jan­u­ary to Oc­to­ber 2022 there were 1,479 rob­beries

PNM man­i­festo promis­es to strength­en the TTPS and re­duce crime

In its 2015 crime plan de­tailed in its man­i­festo, the PNM promised that if elect­ed, the Gov­ern­ment would aim for max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy to strength­en the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and re­duce the crime rate.

*To do this, the man­i­festo said the Po­lice Ser­vice will be strength­ened at all lev­els by the es­tab­lish­ment of an ap­pro­pri­ate Po­lice Man­age­ment Agency to de­vel­op lead­er­ship ca­pa­bil­i­ties and im­ple­ment op­er­a­tional process­es.

*To deal with T&T’s porous bor­ders where guns and drugs pass through, the man­i­festo pro­posed to es­tab­lish a Joint Bor­der Pro­tec­tion Agency that will man­age the se­cu­ri­ty and in­tegri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders and al­so pro­vide equip­ment to the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

*To en­sure that T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty forces have time­ly and ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, the man­i­festo promised to adopt an In­tel­li­gence-led Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mode.

*The man­i­festo al­so promised to part­ner with the ju­di­cia­ry to make the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem more ef­fi­cient.