Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds be­lieves that the ad­di­tion of two drones to the ar­se­nal of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus will go a long way to­wards curb­ing crime. He said this yes­ter­day at the min­istry’s Aber­crom­by Street head­quar­ters, when the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC) hand­ed over the de­vices.

The two drones were giv­en to the De­fence Force, and Hinds be­lieves that the equip­ment will en­hance op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness and pub­lic safe­ty ef­forts in T&T.

“I’ve seen my­self as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty some of the prac­ti­cal us­es and ben­e­fits of the use of drones in our fight against crime,” he said.

Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel ex­plained that the drones, which are equipped with high-res­o­lu­tion cam­eras and ther­mal imag­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, will en­able the De­fence Force to con­duct sur­veil­lance and re­con­nais­sance mis­sions ef­fec­tive­ly.

“The abil­i­ty to de­tect po­ten­tial threats from the air while main­tain­ing a safe dis­tance is in­valu­able in sce­nar­ios where ground ac­cess may be lim­it­ed and chal­leng­ing,” he said.

Mean­while, Hinds said po­lice have no­ticed that crim­i­nals have a pre­ferred firearm, the AR-15, and oth­er high-pow­ered weapons. 

“With­in re­cent times in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there have been height­ened re­ports of gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties with an in­creas­ing trend to mul­ti­ple vic­tim homi­cides. Law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties have in­di­cat­ed as well that they have ob­served a pref­er­ence for the AR-15,” he said.

Hinds said sta­tis­tics showed that out of the 555 mur­ders record­ed for the year so far, 250 or 45.1 per cent of those killings were clas­si­fied as gang-re­lat­ed. The min­is­ter added that 87 per cent of the 250 mur­ders were car­ried out with the use of il­lic­it firearms.

How­ev­er, he said, there had been a height­ened lev­el of pa­trols in com­mu­ni­ties. “We have pro­vid­ed them with ve­hi­cles, we have pro­vid­ed them with in­creased man­pow­er, we have pro­vid­ed them with the re­sources they need and it is the TTPS that must im­pose it­self on these cir­cum­stances in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

The min­is­ter said he un­der­stood that dif­fer­ent types of crime re­quired dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es from law en­force­ment.

“So joint pa­trols out there in the city cen­tres bring a cer­tain type of com­fort to the pop­u­la­tion that is trau­ma­tised. It is al­so a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nals to go where the po­lice and sol­diers are, but that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly deal with the guy who al­ready has a gun and will creep along the back fence to kill some­one in Bel­mont. So that too re­quires a dif­fer­ent type of polic­ing and it’s the use of drones and it is the use of oth­er polic­ing tech­niques,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

As he spoke, an­oth­er man was shot dead at Gloster Lodge Road. He has been iden­ti­fied as 31-year-old Christo­pher Tim­o­thy of Men­tor Al­ley, Laven­tille. The fa­ther of three was shot twice.

Bel­mont res­i­dents have re­newed a call for a po­lice post in the area.

On Tues­day, Nef­ta “Nap­py” Charles was gunned down in St Barbs and days be­fore, three men were mur­dered along Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road. Hinds said the two drones would be used to curb the pres­ence of il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion but would re­quire a dif­fer­ent type of polic­ing.