DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing ac­tion against crim­i­nals caus­ing chaos in To­ba­go. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine have agreed on a new crime plan to deal with the surge in mur­ders and shoot­ings on the is­land.

Dr Row­ley com­ment­ed on the mat­ter dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices, To­ba­go, yes­ter­day, where he lament­ed that he was not pleased with the crime rate on the is­land where he grew up. “I am not hap­py at all, and it di­min­ish­es me, and I think it di­min­ish­es all of To­ba­go,” he said. With mass shoot­ings a grow­ing phe­nom­e­non in Trinidad, he said To­ba­go can­not be iso­lat­ed.

The PM was in To­ba­go one day af­ter a quadru­ple mur­der rocked the is­land. The con­fer­ence fol­lowed a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which he heads. The new crime plan for To­ba­go in­cludes:

• Po­lice from Trinidad will be sent to To­ba­go in the short term and on a con­stant ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis.

• Ef­fec­tive Mon­day, more of­fi­cers from Trinidad were de­ployed to join the Guard and Emer­gency Branch and In­ter-Agency Task Force of­fi­cers were sent to the is­land in May.

• CCTV footage that is cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing out of a cen­tral na­tion­al data­base to be ac­cessed from To­ba­go.

• E99 calls from To­ba­go are to be an­swered in To­ba­go.

• To­ba­go to get an un­spec­i­fied al­lo­ca­tion from the 2,500 CCTV cam­eras to be in­stalled in T&T.

• Ba­co­let is ear­marked as a pos­si­ble lo­ca­tion for the head­quar­ters of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of TTPS.

Em­pha­sis­ing that the small­er is­land can­not be cut off from the main­land, Dr Row­ley said, “I get a lot of ad­vice as to how we should pro­ceed in sit­u­a­tions like this and how we should ame­lio­rate or elim­i­nate these de­vel­op­ments, but a lot of the ad­vice is root­ed in an un­der­stand­ing that we could iso­late To­ba­go from Trinidad. If Trinida­di­ans are want­i­ng to come to To­ba­go for good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent, it’s a right, an en­ti­tle­ment.”

‘Polic­ing ef­fort is not as sharp as it should be’

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley, the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the TTPS em­ploys 90 per cent of its of­fi­cers from the is­land, mak­ing them too fa­mil­iar with the res­i­dents they are meant to pro­tect and serve. 

“There are cer­tain out­flows from that which caused me and oth­ers to be­lieve that the polic­ing ef­fort is not as sharp as it should be, large­ly be­cause of the gen­er­al max­im that fa­mil­iar­i­ty brings con­tempt. The To­ba­go polic­ing ef­fort can ben­e­fit from a greater ef­fort at in­ter­min­gling the ser­vices,” he said.

With that an­nounce­ment came an ap­peal to the res­i­dents of To­ba­go to sup­port that ini­tia­tive. “It is not that Trinidad has per­fect­ed its own polic­ing,” Dr Row­ley ad­mit­ted.

How­ev­er, he be­lieves there are ways To­bag­on­ian of­fi­cers can ben­e­fit from train­ing with ex­po­sure to their Trinida­di­an coun­ter­parts. The im­me­di­ate ob­sta­cle is ac­com­mo­da­tion.

Dr Row­ley not­ed that the Chief Sec­re­tary has giv­en the un­der­tak­ing to work with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to fast-track im­prove­ments to ac­com­mo­date them.

“I ask the peo­ple of To­ba­go, when this be­gins to hap­pen, that you re­ceive this kind of op­er­a­tion as be­ing to your ben­e­fit and not tram­pling on your rights and priv­i­leges of be­ing To­bag­on­ian. We all need to work to­geth­er,” he said. 

The Prime Min­is­ter fur­ther ex­pressed some dis­sat­is­fac­tion to­wards To­bag­o­ni­ans, whom he said have failed to share in­for­ma­tion with law en­force­ment. “Many of you know ex­act­ly who is do­ing what, and you have not been shar­ing that in­for­ma­tion suf­fi­cient­ly with the po­lice, and the po­lice is giv­ing you the un­der­tak­ing that it will re­dou­ble its ef­fort to use the in­for­ma­tion that you share with them,” he lament­ed.

On ad­di­tion­al CCTV cam­eras for the is­land, he said, “We will ring fence To­ba­go and al­low the new cam­eras to be op­er­at­ed and mon­i­tored. That will im­prove our re­sponse time, and it will give us greater own­er­ship of the in­for­ma­tion that comes in.”

In May, dur­ing con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Row­ley dis­closed that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was look­ing in­to To­ba­go’s abil­i­ty to have an ad­di­tion­al arm of polic­ing. At that time, he said the AG may ex­am­ine the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act to see whether sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion could be en­act­ed in To­ba­go. At yes­ter­day’s con­fer­ence, he ex­plained that this is still be­ing done with the view that these of­fi­cers per­form mun­dane tasks to free up the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the TTPS to tack­le more se­ri­ous crimes.

Dr Row­ley al­so an­nounced that Ba­co­let has been iden­ti­fied as a pos­si­ble home for the To­ba­go di­vi­sion’s head­quar­ters to be con­struct­ed.

Far­ley ap­plauds ag­gres­sive ap­proach be­ing tak­en

Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day ap­plaud­ed the ag­gres­sive ap­proach be­ing tak­en to com­bat crime. He hopes To­ba­go can be a pi­lot of what a safe com­mu­ni­ty can look like. “I want you to see to­day’s meet­ing as be­ing proac­tive. See this as us do­ing an in­ter­ven­tion in a time­ly man­ner,” he said.

“It does not mean that, with all our best ef­forts, we won’t have an­oth­er mur­der for the rest of our his­to­ry. I want us to be re­al­is­tic and prac­ti­cal. The plans we have dis­cussed are all sol­id plans; they are ground­ed in da­ta, they are sci­en­tif­ic in na­ture, and once we are able to ex­e­cute them with the re­sources we have, chances are we will see a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion. 

“Cer­tain­ly, for the sec­ond half of the year, we re­al­ly will want to make an ef­fort to re­duce the num­bers in com­par­i­son to the first half of the year,” he added. 

Dr Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed that the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of To­ba­go. He said he has every in­ten­tion to dis­charge that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Al­so present were DCP of Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin, DCP of In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin, and DCP of Ad­min­is­tra­tion Natasha George. Rep­re­sent­ing the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the TTPS were ACP Col­lis Hazel, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk, As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Mark Joseph, As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Sunil Bharath, and In­spec­tor Ma­halia Bac­chus.

Er­la: The un­prece­dent­ed crime has not gone un­no­ticed

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was al­so present, said the un­prece­dent­ed in­crease in vi­o­lent crime in To­ba­go has not gone un­no­ticed. She re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that re­sources from Trinidad were de­ployed to pro­vide train­ing for front­line To­ba­go of­fi­cers. 

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the TTPS was al­so seek­ing to im­prove its in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and in­ves­ti­ga­tions in To­ba­go via “cy­ber­crime and ad­di­tion­al foren­sic ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

Mean­while, the TTPS hopes to use CCTV and foren­sics to in­crease its tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties.