National Security Minister says he does not have a crime plan. What he has are 21st century national security policies with a heavy emphasis on intelligence."It's very banana republic to be talking about crime plans," Griffith said during a spirited contribution in the Lower House on an Opposition motion which said the mishandling of the State's security systems and apparatus had contributed to the spiralling crime rate.
The motion, brought by Port-of-Spain South MP Marlene McDonald, further charged that the Government has been unable to effectively reduce crime and called on it to take immediate steps towards this.Griffith spoke after being lambasted by Diego Martin East MP Colm Imbert for the high crime rate.
However, Griffith said the Opposition's road march was "SAUTT, OPV, OPV, SAUTT," and began by giving statistics which showed that when SAUTT was at its finest, the blimp was hovering and the OPVs were around, crime was at its highest. He said statistics also showed a crime pattern; whenever the People's National Movement (PNM) was in power it went up and whenever they went out of power, it went down.Imbert made frequent trips out of the chamber and Opposition MPs grew silent as he read the statistics.
Griffith said from 1991 to 1995, when the PNM returned to power after the National Alliance for Reconstruction, crime went up every single year. Between 1995 and 2001, when the United National Congress (UNC) was in power, crime went down. It rose again from 2001 to 2011 while the PNM was in power. From 2010 to the present time, crime has started to go back down, he said.He said in 2008, when SAUTT was at its finest, the murder rate was 547, but it was reduced to 405 in 2013.
"We inherited a monster based on people affiliating themselves with gangs and calling them community leaders."Griffith's stinging criticisms of the last administration's crime plans elicited responses from its former prime minister Patrick Manning, who returned to Parliament recently after a two-year extended sick leave because of a stroke. He remained largely silent."That is not true. That is ole talk," Manning said, looking displeased."I'm hearing his voice. He's awake," Griffith said.
He said SAUTT was led by former military people, whom the Opposition insists should not be involved in fighting crime with the police.Griffith said his national security policies include the setting up of the National Security Operations Centre (NSOC), which has replaced SAUTT in intelligence sharing and gathering.
He said real time video footage fed into the NSOC is now transmitted directly to the police and other national security agencies. The use of interceptors in the drug smuggling trade and a programme to make citizens more comfortable in giving the police information are also coming, he said.