Yvonne Ba­boolal

Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er broke down in tears in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as he sought to dis­pel the no­tion that the Gov­ern­ment is tar­get­ing young, black males in its war on crim­i­nals. "Over the last few weeks there has been a kind of ef­fort to bring in the race bo­gey, to say that young, black peo­ple are be­ing ar­rest­ed, that this Gov­ern­ment is racial," Warn­er said. At the time, he was mak­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on a Gov­ern­ment mo­tion re­gard­ing the state of emer­gency. Not­ing that he, too, felt (com­pas­sion) for young, black men in crime, Warn­er said the time had come to stop apol­o­gis­ing for them.

"Have you told these young men don't wear their pants on their but­tocks?" he said ad­dress­ing the Op­po­si­tion PNM bench­es. "Tell them to go to church and don't en­gage in things that are il­le­gal and un­law­ful," he said, his voice break­ing as he be­came emo­tion­al. "If you want to help young, black peo­ple, let's men­tor them and talk to them, not apol­o­gise for them." Warn­er paused, seem­ing­ly un­able to con­tin­ue, and sat down as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­soled him.

"Take your time," she said, pat­ting him on the shoul­der. As Warn­er sought to com­pose him­self, House Speak­er Wade Mark seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­form mem­bers that they could avail them­selves of the lunch that was pro­vid­ed. Warn­er rose short­ly af­ter­wards to con­tin­ue. Ear­li­er in his con­tri­bu­tion he struck down claims that the Gov­ern­ment is tar­get­ing on­ly African com­mu­ni­ties in its crime fight. He waved a copy of a map be­fore the House which iden­ti­fied crime hot spots un­der the tenure of for­mer PNM na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph.

"Diego Mar­tin, Port-of-Spain, Ca­roni, Ari­ma, San­gre Grande, San Fer­nan­do. "Are these not the same hot spots?" he asked. "Look the map. Where's the racial pro­fil­ing? It's the same spots you iden­ti­fied six years ago. "It was the PNM who named the hot spots in the coun­try. "And to come here now and talk about racial pro­fil­ing..." he said as not a peep was heard from the PNM bench­es. Warn­er in­formed the Low­er House that for­mer no­to­ri­ous Port-of-Spain gang leader Ker­win "Fresh" Phillip, now de­ceased, had the pri­vate tele­phone num­ber of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning on his cell phone.

Fresh was al­so giv­en a gov­ern­ment con­tract by the PNM to build a health cen­tre at Char­ford Court in Port-of-Spain. He said while the last ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­knowl­edged that there was an es­ca­la­tion in the num­ber of crim­i­nal gangs and as­so­ci­at­ed vi­o­lence, they hailed gang lead­ers as he­roes. Warn­er said an­oth­er no­to­ri­ous Port-of-Spain gang leader, Mark Guer­ra, al­so de­ceased now, was made na­tion­al ad­vi­sor to the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief pro­gramme un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment. Warn­er said it was a spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed post for Guer­ra, a re­put­ed as­sas­sin, who cam­paigned for the PNM dur­ing elec­tions and was pho­tographed walk­ing with Man­ning in Laven­tille.

Warn­er said Guer­ra drove a mil­lion-dol­lar Mer­cedes Benz, owned an SUV and built an em­pire off his crim­i­nal pur­suits. He re­fut­ed al­le­ga­tions that the rule of law was al­so sus­pend­ed dur­ing the State of Emer­gency and that peo­ple were be­ing ar­rest­ed with­out charge. Warn­er said all those ar­rest­ed were charged and will go through the ju­di­cial process. "Noth­ing we have done is out­side the Con­sti­tu­tion. You can't be ar­bi­trar­i­ly thrown in jail." He said the State of Emer­gency was called be­cause in­tel­li­gence in­formed the Gov­ern­ment that mur­der and may­hem would re­sult from a $22 mil­lion-dol­lar drug bust by law en­force­ment agen­cies.