Gail Alexan­der

The Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit (Sautt) es­tab­lished by the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment will be down­sized and re­struc­tured in­to two new en­ti­ties un­der pro­pos­als by the Gov­ern­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said. Speak­ing around 12.30 am yes­ter­day in the Low­er House's bud­get de­bate, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so an­nounced oth­er an­ti-crime plans. On Sautt, which the PNM es­tab­lished in 2003, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the di­vi­sion had fall­en "very short" of de­liv­ery and for sev­er­al years, failed to make a dent in crime. For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph de­clined com­ment on the plan yes­ter­day. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in Par­lia­ment, said Sautt which had been op­er­at­ing with­out the prop­er leg­isla­tive sup­port and ac­count­abil­i­ty cost $350 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, as well as $100 mil­lion for 53 re­tired for­eign of­fi­cers.

"This needs to be to­tal­ly re­struc­tured as it is a pow­er­ful tool which can be used to re­duce crime but has failed due to im­prop­er use of re­sources," she said. "We pro­pose hold­ing talks with stake­hold­ers to re­struc­ture and down­size the unit to per­form two core func­tions...right now it is all over the place, in­clud­ing tap­ping my cell phone as I un­der­stand and yours," she told MPs. She said Sautt would be trans­formed in­to a cen­tral point of crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion and sec­ond­ly, in­to a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty train­ing acad­e­my. "As we down­size Sautt, we'll give the po­lice of­fi­cers there the op­tion to be rein­te­grat­ed in­to the ser­vice and im­me­di­ate­ly the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers will in­crease in the fight against crime," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "The non-po­lice part of the op­er­a­tional com­mand will be sub­ject­ed to fur­ther train­ing and will have the op­tion to be ab­sorbed in­to the Po­lice Ser­vice or be rein­te­grat­ed back in­to the Po­lice Force (Ser­vice).

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the first as­pect of trans­for­ma­tion for Sautt will in­volve counter-ter­ror­ism and ma­jor crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties af­fect­ing T&T and com­bat­ting crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty af­fect­ing dai­ly life.

In­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion would be sent to the unit for plans to be im­ple­ment­ed and ac­tion tak­en to ap­pre­hend felons and se­cure ev­i­dence.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in­tel­li­gence di­vi­sions need­ed over­haul­ing. She said there were sev­er­al in­tel­li­gence agen­cies which kept in­for­ma­tion apart from each oth­er, lead­ing to du­pli­ca­tion and not work­ing to­geth­er as they should. She said the de­part­ments were used for the wrong rea­sons, in­clud­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ing se­nior cit­i­zen Per­cy Vil­lafana who had blocked the for­mer prime min­is­ter from en­ter­ing his St Joseph home in April. "The (di­vi­sions) were al­so used for po­lit­i­cal mileage rather than fight­ing crime–this will cease im­me­di­ate­ly, we will not use those units for those agen­das," the PM added. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was pro­posed that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Train­ing Acad­e­my en­sure train­ing in every as­pect for all law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, rather than mil­i­tary train­ing alone.

It would be based on a uni­ver­si­ty con­cept such as in the US and cater to all law en­force­ment of­fi­cers from the Po­lice Ser­vice and Fire Ser­vice to pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms al­so. She said present train­ing en­vi­ron­ments were to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able and in­door and out­door shoot­ing ranges were need­ed to prop­er­ly train law en­force­ment of­fi­cers. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it will be im­me­di­ate­ly manda­to­ry for all law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to use the range an­nu­al­ly to be eval­u­at­ed in gun use. Psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions will be done an­nu­al­ly to en­sure of­fi­cers were of sound mind. Poly­graph test­ing would be added to the Sautt re­cruit­ing process al­so. "We have a plan..." Per­sad-Bisses­sar added.

She said mon­ey from mega projects would be di­vert­ed to the an­ti-crime fight.

Ini­tia­tives in­clud­ed in­tro­duc­tion of an In­ter­net Web plan to bring crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty to the pub­lic's at­ten­tion–and for their as­sis­tance–via Web sites and cell­phones. Sites will fea­ture want­ed posters and mug shots of crim­i­nals, alert no­tices to track down cul­prits and miss­ing chil­dren and video footage of ac­tu­al crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. E-mails will track the lat­est crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. A vir­tu­al com­mand cen­tre would co-or­di­nate ac­tiv­i­ty. In­for­ma­tion from the pub­lic would be con­fi­den­tial. "We'll bring the fight against crime in­to your lap­tops, cell­phones, desk­tops, Ipods, Black­ber­ries– tech­nol­o­gy is our fo­cus," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. She said the PNM spent $1.3 bil­lion on off­shore pa­trol ves­sels, yet these can­not be used.