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Friday, February 28, 2025

Scotland talks on crime plan with TTPS heads

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210 days ago
20240802
Minister in the Ministry of National Security Keith Scotland, second from right, with from left, Deputy Commisioner Suzette Martin, Deputy Commissioner Junior Benjamin, Police Comissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher and Deputy Commissioner Natasha George after a meeting at the National Security head office in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday.

Minister in the Ministry of National Security Keith Scotland, second from right, with from left, Deputy Commisioner Suzette Martin, Deputy Commissioner Junior Benjamin, Police Comissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher and Deputy Commissioner Natasha George after a meeting at the National Security head office in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday.

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Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land met with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ex­ec­u­tive on Wednes­day, where he said the ma­jor is­sue dis­cussed was the re­duc­tion of crime.

Scot­land, who was chair­man of Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Crime be­fore he was ap­point­ed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to deal specif­i­cal­ly with the TTPS, has been vo­cif­er­ous about the po­lice do­ing more to ad­dress crime.

Yes­ter­day, he told Guardian Me­dia that the safe­ty of the pop­u­la­tion was para­mount for him.

“I can’t go in­to the de­tails of what we dis­cussed but we spoke about is­sues like po­lice man­pow­er, the tight­en­ing of (Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s) crime plan, the re­duc­tion of crime and gen­er­al polic­ing,” Scot­land said.

Scot­land added, “The is­sues were dis­cussed in no par­tic­u­lar or­der but the re­duc­tion of crime was the high­est pri­or­i­ty. The pop­u­la­tion needs to have that sense of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty so I will meet with them again next week.”

The po­lice ser­vice is ex­pect­ed to in­crease its man­pow­er by 1,000 in keep­ing with a promise made by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last Oc­to­ber. Gov­ern­ment pro­ject­ed to spend an ad­di­tion­al $401 mil­lion in fis­cal 2024 on salaries for the po­lice to beef up its man­pow­er, as well as to cov­er the fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives for spe­cialised units.

He said the meet­ing was the first of many with the ex­ec­u­tive, as he in­tends to meet reg­u­lar­ly with the po­lice, par­tic­u­lar­ly on crime re­duc­tion.

He said he will meet with the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion next week af­ter mak­ing an ini­tial con­tact to­day.

Dur­ing a JSC meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary, Scot­land grilled Hare­wood-Christo­pher on re­duc­ing crime af­ter she missed her tar­get to re­duce mur­ders by 20 per cent. In re­sponse, she said the re­trieval of il­le­gal firearms and dis­man­tling crim­i­nal gangs were two mea­sures used to re­duce crime. In a me­dia re­lease on Wednes­day evening, the min­istry said Scot­land met with Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her deputies, Suzette Mar­tin, Ju­nior Ben­jamin and Natasha George to take an op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain an in-depth un­der­stand­ing of the op­er­a­tional dy­nam­ics and press­ing needs of the po­lice ser­vice.

The dis­cus­sions, the re­lease said, pro­vid­ed the MP for Port-of-Spain South with valu­able in­sights in­to the chal­lenges faced by the po­lice and the re­sources re­quired to en­hance their ef­fec­tive­ness.

The re­lease said, “Min­is­ter Scot­land as­sured the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that the is­sues raised dur­ing the meet­ing would be ad­dressed with ur­gency. He fur­ther em­pha­sized that this meet­ing marked the be­gin­ning of his ef­forts, to tack­le crime and en­hance the safe­ty of cit­i­zens across the na­tion.”

Dur­ing the meet­ing, which last­ed about an hour and a half, Scot­land told those present of his vi­sion for the broad­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work, “with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on the piv­otal role of the po­lice, in the on­go­ing fight against crime.”

He em­pha­sised the need for a ro­bust and re­spon­sive se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, en­sur­ing that the po­lice ser­vice is equipped to meet the evolv­ing de­mands of law en­force­ment.

In ap­point­ing Scot­land to his Cab­i­net on Ju­ly 25, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the po­lice were of con­cern to Cab­i­net.

“We have run this Gov­ern­ment since 2015 with a sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced num­ber of min­is­ters, but be­cause of the pres­sures of the push­back that is com­ing to us from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, we have de­cid­ed to put a bit more of the Cab­i­net re­source on the po­lice and some as­pects of se­cu­ri­ty,” the PM said.

Row­ley added, “We be­lieve the po­lice need spe­cial care and at­ten­tion, spe­cial mon­i­tor­ing, spe­cial re­view and of course spe­cial guid­ance in some in­stances.”

Af­ter be­ing sworn in last Fri­day, Scot­land met with res­i­dents of Sea Lots the fol­low­ing day on the po­lice-in­volved killing of Jonathan Whar­wood, 25.

Whar­wood was killed af­ter he al­leged­ly pulled a cut­lass and at­tacked po­lice, who re­spond­ed to a re­port that a sus­pect in the shoot­ing of one of their own was at a house on Pro­duc­tion Dri­ve, Sea Lots.

In one of his first meet­ings at his of­fice, Scot­land met with Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) di­rec­tor David West and deputy di­rec­tor Michelle Solomon-Baksh to dis­cuss the sta­tus of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to po­lice of­fi­cers.


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