Yvonne Ba­boolal

Jack Warn­er is claim­ing he was told he was giv­en the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry so that he would fail and his track record of pro­duc­ing re­sults could be taint­ed.

Warn­er made the dis­clo­sure in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as he made a state­ment on crime sta­tis­tics. "In the face of ad­verse state­ments that this was a daunt­ing task, prone to fail­ure and which may taint my track record of pro­duc­ing re­sults, I fear­less­ly took up the man­tle and ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge to im­prove the Gov­ern­ment's re­spons­es to crime," he said.

In his 16-page state­ment ti­tled A Com­par­a­tive Analy­sis of the Crime Stats for the Pe­ri­od 2008-2012, Warn­er list­ed some of the ma­jor crimes which he said flour­ished un­der the last Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, from the growth of gangs, kid­nap­pings, rob­beries, mur­ders, and the in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions to "dust­bin ex­plo­sions."

Re­call­ing then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's promise to in­ves­ti­gate "Mr Big," Warn­er said, "As the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, I en­quired in­to this and was told the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has no in­for­ma­tion on this 'Mr Big'." Claim­ing a lot of the present crime had been in­her­it­ed, Warn­er said some of his ini­tia­tives were aimed at fa­cil­i­tat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion of the prob­lem. Sta­tis­tics, he in­sist­ed, would show this had been achieved. Warn­er be­gan by quot­ing Amer­i­can ju­rist Oliv­er Wen­dell Holmes to show the im­por­tance of sta­tis­tics.

"In or­der to un­der­stand what is, we must know what has been and what it tends to be­come," he said. Sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch of the po­lice ser­vice at­test to the suc­cess of his crime strate­gies, de­spite ques­tions raised on the re­leased fig­ures, he said. "The same agency recog­nised by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion as the le­git­i­mate au­thor­i­ty on crime sta­tis­tics. "It was good sta­tis­tics when they were in of­fice. They are bad sta­tis­tics now," Warn­er said. Quot­ing these "bad" sta­tis­tics, the min­is­ter said from the be­gin­ning of 2010 to 2012, many cat­e­gories of se­ri­ous crime have, gen­er­al­ly, been on a de­cline.

This prompt­ed a long whis­tle from Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley which, in turn, caused Speak­er Wade Mark to jump to his feet in out­rage. "You can­not whis­tle in Par­lia­ment. I am ask­ing you to de­sist from whistling," Mark shout­ed. Af­ter the in­ter­rup­tion, Warn­er dis­closed his crime re­duc­tion sta­tis­tics. He not­ed there was a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes from even dur­ing the state of emer­gency in No­vem­ber 2011 and No­vem­ber 2012 from 1,221 to 1,184. Go­ing even fur­ther back, he said un­der the PNM in 2009, there were 507 mur­ders. In 2012 there were 377 mur­ders. "That is 130 less, which means one less mur­der every three days than un­der the PNM," Warn­er said.

Warn­er list­ed some of Gov­ern­ment's com­ing crime-re­duc­tion ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing:

•Scan­ners at the ports

•Up­grad­ing and ex­pan­sion of the Coastal Sur­veil­lance Radar Sys­tem

•Es­tab­lish­ment of a 15- mem­ber ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty

•Full pre­cept­ing of 1,000 De­fence Force of­fi­cers with full pow­ers as po­lice of­fi­cers, to start with

•In­creased land and sea aer­i­al sur­veil­lance us­ing fixed and ro­tary wing as­sets

•Host­ing of a crime con­sul­ta­tion fo­rum

•En­rolling of 200 po­lice of­fi­cers in the Dis­tance Learn­ing for Ev­i­dence Based Polic­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge's Po­lice Ex­ec­u­tive Pro­gramme.

•New uni­forms, more ve­hi­cles and more bul­let proof vests for po­lice of­fi­cers

•A ded­i­cat­ed high­way­pa­trol unit

JACK'S FACTS

Per cent re­duc­tions in:

•Mur­der: 26

•wound­ing: 18

•break­ing and bur­glary:26

•fraud of­fences: 45

•gen­er­al lar­ce­ny: 11

•lar­ce­ny of ve­hi­cles: 41

•lar­ce­ny, dwelling house: 14