Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is as­sur­ing the pub­lic that the Gov­ern­ment, and the wider na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, are do­ing all they can to en­sure that crim­i­nals are cap­tured and brought to jus­tice.

In a state­ment re­leased this morn­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter urged cit­i­zens to avoid the temp­ta­tion of il­le­gal­ly arm­ing them­selves against crim­i­nals, warn­ing that they may be pro­vid­ing those crim­i­nals with the weapons to de­stroy them and oth­er po­ten­tial vic­tims.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued by the Prime Min­is­ter.

STATE­MENT BY PRIME MIN­IS­TER ROW­LEY

We at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly, we take cer­tain de­ci­sions and we have cer­tain op­er­a­tions in place.

There are de­mands be­ing made on the Po­lice and the wider Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices and the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices are be­ing con­stant­ly re­sourced to keep them avail­able and ef­fec­tive. The brazen­ness of the crim­i­nals is root­ed in a be­lief that:

1. they will not be ap­pre­hend­ed

2. ⁠even if ap­pre­hend­ed they have noth­ing to fear from the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

We plan and ex­e­cute strate­gies to pre­vent these truths from pre­vail­ing and that they are wrong on both counts.

Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, the re­sults are not sat­is­fac­to­ry but we, as a coun­try, re­main fo­cused on get­ting bet­ter re­sults at every turn. For ex­am­ple, on­ly re­cent­ly we ap­proved the ad­di­tion, at re­quest, in emer­gency mode, 50 new ve­hi­cles to the pa­trol fleet of the Po­lice and the De­fence Force.

We are con­tin­u­ous­ly en­gaged in de­tect­ing and man­ag­ing the mil­lions of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and the thou­sands of firearms which are cir­cu­lat­ing with­in the coun­try. To this end, we ap­peal to the pub­lic to as­sist in this fight, to elim­i­nate these fre­quent out­rages and gun crimes, in gen­er­al, by pro­vid­ing as much in­for­ma­tion as you are able to so that the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice per­son­nel can get ahead of the crim­i­nals be­fore they cal­lous­ly add to the death and de­struc­tion that a hand­ful of cit­i­zens wreak up­on the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion.

An il­le­gal gun in the hands of a cit­i­zen is not se­cu­ri­ty to any­one. It is sim­ply a clear and present threat to the lives of all cit­i­zens since any such weapon can on­ly be used in com­mit­ting a crime and fre­quent use of such weapons on­ly help to add to the suf­fer­ing.

If you know some­thing, un­der­take to say some­thing. The pro­tec­tive ser­vices will con­tin­ue to go af­ter the weapons and their han­dlers, but their jobs can be great­ly en­hanced by in­creased in­for­ma­tion streams from the sphere of pub­lic spirit­ed­ness.

The best hol­i­day gift that can be af­ford­ed to any po­ten­tial shoot­er is to keep se­cret the ex­is­tence of his/her dead­ly tools and the in­ten­tion to use them. The pro­tec­tion of the so­ci­ety is a 24-hour-sev­en-days-a-week ex­er­cise, which will re­main the du­ty and fo­cus of the state, as we con­tin­ue to con­front all those who choose vi­o­lent crime as their con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion’s chal­lenges.

Dr the Hon. Kei­th Row­ley
Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go