Renu­ka Singh

The Gov­ern­ment has ap­proved an or­der of 2,500 9mm pis­tols to deal with the coun­try's run­away crime.The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that af­ter sev­er­al high-pow­ered meet­ings, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith got ap­proval to or­der the guns to up­grade the cur­rent po­lice stock.The or­der, the Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands, has al­ready been placed.

Grif­fith, at the meet­ings, steered clear of in­dict­ing for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters but did say the po­lice force was ill-equipped to deal with the crime surge, and that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment may be bet­ter armed than of­fi­cers.To off­set that in­equal­i­ty, Grif­fith said the guns were "an ur­gent ne­ces­si­ty."

In an in­ter­view, Grif­fith con­firmed the or­der of 2,500 guns for the po­lice force. On whether his pre­de­ces­sors failed to prop­er­ly equip the po­lice ser­vice, Grif­fith on­ly said: "I am not get­ting in­to what they did or did not do. That is in the past as far as I am con­cerned. But yes, we have ap­proved the or­der for the 2,500 guns."He said that comes with spe­cial train­ing and the es­tab­lish­ment of an in­door shoot­ing range for of­fi­cers to prac­tice.

A sec­ond State of Emer­gency?

This weapon up­grade for the Po­lice Ser­vice comes just days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced an "all hands on deck" ap­proach to deal­ing with the es­ca­lat­ing mur­der rate. Af­ter a meet­ing with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that no of­fi­cer would be al­lowed on leave and she re­called those who were on leave.The ad­di­tion­al weapon­ry, the Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands, forms part of a holis­tic plan to fight crime.

At the meet­ings, sev­er­al ex­perts and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters dis­cussed dif­fer­ent ways to ad­dress the crime prob­lem, with one such sug­ges­tion be­ing a sec­ond State of Emer­gency.Grif­fith, in sub­se­quent me­dia in­ter­views, said he did not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an­oth­er State of Emer­gency to curb the spi­ralling crime rate.

The Gov­ern­ment called a State of Emer­gency back in Au­gust 2011 af­ter a par­tic­u­lar­ly bloody week­end left six dead. Now with 24 mur­ders record­ed up to yes­ter­day, Grif­fith ad­mit­ted to weigh­ing his op­tions to help com­bat the fig­ures.