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Monday, March 3, 2025

PM worried citizens turning blind eye to crime

Too close for comfort

... Infiltration of state agency also troubling

by

Carisa Lee
348 days ago
20240320
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, centre, turns the sod for the HDC’s Caura Housing Development with, from left, HDC chairman Newman George, Tunapuna MP Esmond Forde, Minister of Housing and Urban Development Camille Robinson-Regis, Minister in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development Adrian Leonce, Chairman of the Tunapuna Piarco Regional Corporation Josiah Austin and Chairman of the HDC Noel Garcia.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, centre, turns the sod for the HDC’s Caura Housing Development with, from left, HDC chairman Newman George, Tunapuna MP Esmond Forde, Minister of Housing and Urban Development Camille Robinson-Regis, Minister in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development Adrian Leonce, Chairman of the Tunapuna Piarco Regional Corporation Josiah Austin and Chairman of the HDC Noel Garcia.

Roberto Codallo

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


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