Jensen La Vende

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.