KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has no au­thor­i­ty to op­er­ate as a “ref­er­ee” when it comes to any truce among crim­i­nals.

This was the word from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, as he gave his po­si­tion on deal­ing with gangs in this coun­try.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment has not grant­ed the TTPS any sort of per­mis­sion to arrange any peace deal with gangs.

Row­ley said, “When you’re talk­ing about, ‘Oh this gang, and that gang ne­go­ti­ate a peace treaty with the po­lice blow­ing whis­tle as a ref­er­ee’, that is not on.”

Row­ley was re­spond­ing to a Trinidad Ex­press ar­ti­cle which re­port­ed that a peace agree­ment had been reached be­tween two no­to­ri­ous gangs af­fil­i­at­ed with a num­ber of re­cent killings in Port-of-Spain. The truce was re­port­ed­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the po­lice. The TTPS has since de­nied this ever hap­pened.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, the stance of the Gov­ern­ment is quite clear when it comes to gangs.

“Let me make my po­si­tion very clear, on the po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the po­si­tion of the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, gang ac­tiv­i­ty is crim­i­nal con­duct. As a mat­ter of fact, it is crim­i­nal con­duct that spawns the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of gang, gang leader, gang war­fare, gang peace or gang war. The Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der­stands this and has al­lot­ted sig­nif­i­cant amount of Par­lia­ment ef­fort to cod­i­fy the law to al­low the law en­force­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­spond to crim­i­nal con­duct iden­ti­fied as gang ac­tiv­i­ty. I re­fer here specif­i­cal­ly to the an­ti-gang laws.”

He added that while po­lice of­fi­cers have the au­thor­i­ty to speak with all cit­i­zens, ne­go­ti­at­ing with crim­i­nals is off-lim­its.

“And notwith­stand­ing the fact that the po­lice is re­quired to speak to every cit­i­zen in this coun­try if the po­lice sees it fit. Whether you’re an abus­ing hus­band, a delin­quent par­ent un­der the tru­an­cy act or oth­er­wise, the po­lice will speak to you and will be au­tho­rised to speak to you. But what the po­lice is not go­ing to be au­tho­rised to do is to ne­go­ti­ate any abridge­ment of the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go as it ap­plies to any as­pect of crim­i­nal con­duct,” Row­ley ex­plained.

He al­so cau­tioned that a cer­tain lev­el of in­ter­ac­tion with crim­i­nals could send the wrong mes­sage and lead to per­sons get­ting more “rank”.

“You have to be very care­ful that in deal­ing with them, you don’t send the mes­sage that they have rank, and they get more rank be­cause they could talk to you,” he said.

Show­room ve­hi­cles for cops, sol­diers

As it per­tains to fight­ing crime, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that the Cab­i­net has ap­proved 50 new ve­hi­cles to be used by the TTPS and De­fence Force.

Row­ley said these ve­hi­cles will all be brand new.

He said for months, the TTPS has been try­ing to buy ve­hi­cles through the nor­mal bu­reau­crat­ic process but that has been very slow.

Row­ley said: “We need to have the sol­diers and the po­lice out there im­me­di­ate­ly. The Cab­i­net took the po­si­tion, if it is ve­hi­cles they don’t have, go in the show­room and see what is there. We’ve done that. In the next week or two, you should see an­oth­er 50 ve­hi­cles to en­sure that when the sol­diers want to go out with the po­lice that there is no im­ped­i­ment of no ve­hi­cle. So that’s what we do. That’s the kind of thing we do. We sup­port as far as we are able to en­sure that they are re­sourced to re­spond.”