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Monday, July 21, 2025

Drug, crime problem growing

by

20140624

Point­ing out that there was a cor­re­la­tion be­tween the in­crease of drugs flow­ing through the re­gion and the crime and vi­o­lence on the re­gion­al streets, in­clud­ing those of T&T, US As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State William Brown­field said the in­creased use of the Caribbean as a trans-ship­ment point for drugs had led to the in­crease in mur­ders.He pre­dict­ed that the lev­el of vi­o­lence was like­ly to get worse over the next few years, warn­ing that even arms of the State can be chal­lenged.

He added: "Drug traf­fick­ers have to have the fire­pow­er to de­fend their turf. They even­tu­al­ly have to be pre­pared to take on in­sti­tu­tions of the State, whether that is the po­lice, bor­der guards, cus­toms or the Ju­di­cia­ry."Brown­field said drug car­tels were well or­gan­ised and tar­get­ed coun­tries where there were weak­ness­es, which could range from poor­ly paid pub­lic of­fi­cials to un­pro­tect­ed bor­ders.

He re­peat­ed his state­ment, re­port­ed in the T&T Guardian last month, that the US es­ti­mat­ed the quan­tum of drugs be­ing trans-shipped through the Caribbean to the US had in­creased, say­ing it had risen be­tween 2011 and 2013 by over 300 per cent.He list­ed three ma­jor routes in the Caribbean. The first, he said, was through Ja­maica and then on­to the Unit­ed States, the sec­ond through the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic/Haiti and the third through the east­ern Caribbean.

Brown­field said the US gov­ern­ment was part­ner­ing with Cari­com gov­ern­ments to help deal with the crime chal­lenge, in­clud­ing the chal­lenge of guns com­ing in­to the re­gion from the US.

He said the re­al­i­ty was that the US had its own laws re­lat­ing to gun con­trol but had put in place a sys­tem where law en­force­ment could trace a gun in re­al time, de­ter­mine if it was in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly and if the bal­lis­tics showed it had been used in any oth­er crime. The am­bas­sador ad­mit­ted that was not enough but said the US was op­er­at­ing in a sit­u­a­tion where its le­gal sys­tem was dif­fer­ent from those in the re­gion.

On the is­sue of ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings, he said if there was ev­i­dence that the po­lice ser­vice was in­volved in such killing in any coun­try, by law, the US would have to dis­con­tin­ue co-op­er­a­tion with the or­gan­i­sa­tion.He ex­plained that was cur­rent­ly the sit­u­a­tion with the St Lu­cian po­lice and that was why co-op­er­a­tion with that coun­try had been sus­pend­ed. Brown­field said that was un­for­tu­nate be­cause the move not on­ly hurt St Lu­cia but the re­gion as a whole.

Al­le­ga­tions of ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings have been made against the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice by mem­bers of the pub­lic af­ter the re­cent spate of po­lice shoot­ings.So far this year, 29 peo­ple have been killed by the po­lice in T&T.


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