Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ex­pressed con­cern that cit­i­zens are turn­ing a blind eye to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in this coun­try. And he has al­so al­lud­ed to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the re­cent Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) shake-up may have come be­cause it had been over­run by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

He made the ref­er­ence yes­ter­day as he spoke about the ris­ing crime surge in the coun­try dur­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Cau­ra Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment in Tu­na­puna.

While the PM did not di­rect­ly name the SSA, he said, “As I speak to you now, the prob­lem has mul­ti­plied be­cause for the last two weeks, we have been deal­ing with the State’s con­tri­bu­tion to that prob­lem, where the state au­thor­i­ty in po­si­tion of trust has sur­rep­ti­tious­ly bro­ken down and the ca­lyp­so that we lis­ten to, Who’s Go­ing to Guard the Guards, be­came the most per­ti­nent ques­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause the state agen­cies had be­come one with the crim­i­nal agen­cies.”

Two weeks ago, SSA di­rec­tor Ma­jor Roger Best was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave and Row­ley re­called US Am­bas­sador An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer from Wash­ing­ton to act in the post.

Phillips-Spencer is cur­rent­ly prob­ing mat­ters with­in the SSA which Row­ley had said were of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cern to the Gov­ern­ment.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so took cit­i­zens who sup­port and en­cour­age crim­i­nals to task, say­ing it was un­ac­cept­able for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to re­main qui­et when they know those who use il­le­gal weapons to com­mit crimes.

“It is on­ly when the firearm is dis­charged and kills some­body that you re­act and call up­on the po­lice and the Gov­ern­ment to do some­thing. The thing that you do when some­body is killed is to bury the dead,” Row­ley said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said up un­til re­cent­ly, most of the crim­i­nals on­ly had ac­cess to hand­guns which they could con­ceal but now, most of the killings are done by peo­ple with as­sault weapons which are hard to trans­port or op­er­ate with­out mem­bers see­ing some­thing.

“If you know who it is, then for God’s sake tell the po­lice what they have, where they are and then some­thing will be done ...there are too many peo­ple in this coun­try who know who the killers are, who know who the crim­i­nals are, and who are turn­ing a blind eye to it and worst, who are en­cour­ag­ing it,” the PM said.

Row­ley said many of the crim­i­nals live in house­holds and those who may know about their ac­tiv­i­ties are all part of the prob­lem and en­cour­ag­ing it.

“We have dif­fi­cul­ty with the po­lice, yes we know, we have dif­fi­cul­ty with the Coast Guard, yes we know … but we are con­stant­ly avail­able to re­spond to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment once the in­for­ma­tion about the pres­ence and in­tent are known to the state au­thor­i­ties,” he said.

“Many of these peo­ple live in homes. A per­son can­not be han­dling an as­sault weapon in your house­hold and you don’t know. And if you are the moth­er, the fa­ther, the neigh­bour, the cousin, the friend and you know, then you are part of the prob­lem if you pro­vide them with the se­cre­cy that they need …”

He said the on­ly ad­van­tage the crim­i­nals have is de­cid­ing when, where and who they at­tack, but if the pop­u­la­tion re­mains qui­et when they see them walk­ing the streets with guns, then they have an­oth­er ad­van­tage.

“We are too fear­ful to re­port them to the au­thor­i­ties,” he said.

Ref­er­enc­ing a “par­lia­men­tary col­league” who com­plained that a mur­der­er who was on bail had com­mit­ted an­oth­er mur­der and was now on bail for that sec­ond mur­der, he said, “We are copy­ing some sys­tems from so­ci­eties that are dif­fer­ent to ours and putting in place some things that will work to the ad­van­tage of the near-do-wells in our so­ci­ety. I am not here say­ing I want to do the ju­di­cia­ry job, but I am just point­ing out to you the cause and ef­fect.”

Not­ing that peo­ple who re­ceive bail in some in­stances are “com­ing out to kill the wit­ness­es”, the PM said, “That is what it is. We bet­ter face those re­al­i­ties. And we should al­so know that when we en­ter the realm of putting vi­o­lent crim­i­nals who are in­side, out­side on bail, that the av­er­age cit­i­zen will want noth­ing to do with be­ing a wit­ness in any vi­o­lent mat­ter.

“Be­cause if you are a wit­ness, you know what your por­tion is even if the per­son is con­vict­ed and our ju­di­cial sys­tem will on­ly sur­vive to dis­pense jus­tice if there are wit­ness­es who are pre­pared to stand up and say I saw this or I know that. As long as the sys­tem is­sues that, the crim­i­nal would have won the war.” —With re­port­ing by Carisa Lee