Geisha Kow­lessar

The con­tro­ver­sial Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) has been giv­en the great­light to re­sume its op­er­a­tions. The di­rec­tive, ac­cord­ing to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs, was giv­en fol­low­ing the re­cent com­ple­tion of a probe in­to the unit.Gibbs ad­dressed mem­bers of the me­dia out­side the West End Po­lice Sta­tion, Diego Mar­tin, yes­ter­day af­ter the area was locked down for sev­er­al hours dur­ing an an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion.

He said: "The SIA in­ves­ti­ga­tion at this point is some of the things are still on­go­ing but for the most part it's com­plete and we are mov­ing for­ward in terms of our in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tions."We have fin­ished our in­ves­ti­ga­tions in terms of all the work we have done with SIA with the dif­fer­ent groups, now it's a case of let­ting them get back to do­ing their job. That's where it sits at the mo­ment," Gibbs said.

He said the SIA had on­ly been shut down for a few days.Gibbs added: "For a pe­ri­od of time we had shut down com­plete­ly every­thing and they (the SIA) have been up and run­ning for every­thing ex­cept in­ter­cep­tion." He con­firmed that the unit had been do­ing mon­i­tor­ing and sur­veil­lance."We have to un­der­stand that that type of work like in­ter­cep­tion is for work that is done where noth­ing else works and so there is a whole lot of things that we do in terms of polic­ing and in terms of in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing pri­or to get­ting there and in terms of crim­i­nal work. That's on­ly one tool.

Say­ing SIA em­ploy­ees fell un­der the purview of the Gov­ern­ment, Gibbs could not say if any of its mem­bers would face crim­i­nal or dis­ci­pli­nary charges."At this point we aren't ex­pect­ing things to be laid. We have done our in­ves­ti­ga­tions and we have moved on and we are al­low­ing the peo­ple to get back to their work," Gibbs said.

Asked whether the elite Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence Unit (CIU) al­so was en­gaged in spy­ing Gibbs said the unit was in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven, deal­ing pri­mar­i­ly with crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence.

"That's their func­tion, to gath­er crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence and it helps us to nar­row down on the tar­gets and hotspots and in terms of any­thing na­tion­al, in terms of se­cu­ri­ty. They help us put those pieces to­geth­er," Gibbs said.Pressed fur­ther whether the CIU was in­volved in wire­tap­ping Gibbs said: "Those are po­lice tac­tics. Those are Gov­ern­ment tac­tics in terms of deal­ing with crim­i­nal and se­cu­ri­ty ac­tiv­i­ties.

"I won't go in­to de­tail of how they do things. I won't con­firm or de­ny what they do. They deal with in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing which is not open to the pub­lic."

More lock­downs ex­pect­ed

The op­er­a­tion, which be­gan dur­ing the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day morn­ing, in­clud­ed mem­bers of the Or­gan­ised Crime, Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau (OC­NFB), the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt) and the West­ern Di­vi­sion­al Task Force.

De­scrib­ing the ex­er­cise as a "ma­jor lock­down" Gibbs praised the ef­forts of the law­men, say­ing the op­er­a­tion yield­ed "great suc­cess" in nab­bing five mur­der sus­pects and pur­port­ed gang mem­bers."This is one of many the pub­lic can ex­pect. We are tar­get­ing the hotspots and go­ing af­ter the tar­gets," Gibbs said.Say­ing polic­ing in­volved pre­ven­tion, aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion, the top cop said en­force­ment, sup­pres­sion and de­ter­rence al­so was crit­i­cal.

He added: "The lat­ter part is what we need to do to con­trol some of the crime that is run­ning ram­pant."But in the long-term ef­fect we al­so have to put in mea­sures to pre­vent the root caus­es of crime. We can­not just look at the symp­toms of crime."We need to do what needs to be done and we're go­ing to come down hard on peo­ple," Gibbs said.

In light of the re­cent spate of mur­ders in Pe­tit Val­ley, Gibbs said the de­ci­sion to lock down the West­ern Di­vi­sion "wasn't just a ran­dom hit." He said: "We knew what we were do­ing based on the in­tel­li­gence we had. We will con­tin­ue to do that as we move for­ward in­to the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons."

Flash­back

The Spe­cial Branch shut down the op­er­a­tions of SIA in ear­ly No­vem­ber when it was dis­cov­ered it had been spy­ing on peo­ple in pub­lic life by wire­tap­ping cell­phones, land­lines, as well as in­ter­cept­ing e-mails and text mes­sages.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an and PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley were among politi­cians who were spied on.It al­so was al­leged there were links be­tween the SIA and the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit (Sautt) which al­so had been un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for spy­ing. The In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Bill was passed in the House last week.