Hours af­ter he called for the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus to do more to ad­dress gun vi­o­lence, the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in a Face­book post an­nounced a meet­ing with the heads of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

The post, made just af­ter 2.30 p.m. said Row­ley was meet­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Er­la Christo­pher and act­ing Chief of De­fence Staff Cap­tain Kem­ba Han­nays at the Of­fi­cial Res­i­dence of the Prime Min­is­ter at La Fan­tasie Road, St. Ann’s.

Al­so at the meet­ing are Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

At 8.30 am Row­ley post­ed: “Notwith­stand­ing the per­sis­tent ef­forts of the var­i­ous state ma­chin­ery, the se­lec­tion of vi­o­lence as a way of life, the love af­fair and glam­or­iza­tion of firearms and the wan­ton dis­re­gard for hu­man life in Trinidad and To­ba­go has now gone be­yond con­cern­ing to the ridicu­lous.

This in­tractable sit­u­a­tion now de­mands that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens be giv­en the right to their peace and safe­ty above the free­dom of the law­less and the vi­o­lent few who op­er­ate with im­puni­ty. The cur­rent vi­o­lent crime spree will not be tol­er­at­ed. The state will re­dou­ble all ef­forts to cur­tail these vi­o­lent out­bursts, will hunt down and dis­arm the per­pe­tra­tors and will make op­er­a­tional ad­just­ments so that the state se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices can act with dis­patch against the vi­o­lent co­hort of our na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.”

The state­ment came af­ter eight peo­ple were mur­dered in three sep­a­rate shoot­ings with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

To­day’s meet­ing is the sec­ond such high-pro­file pub­lic meet­ing in three months.

In Ju­ly Row­ley met with act­ing Chief of De­fence Staff, Brig Gen Dex­ter Fran­cis, the di­rec­tor of the SSA and the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice.

That four-hour-long meet­ing, Row­ley said “fea­tured re­ports from each of the di­vi­sion­al heads of the po­lice who out­lined the ini­tia­tives im­ple­ment­ed in their re­gion to ad­dress crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.”