Geisha Kow­lessar

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day knocked the de­lays in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and the abil­i­ty of some to be free on bail to com­mit more of­fences to pay their lawyer bills.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the new Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, lo­cat­ed at the foothills of East Port-of-Spain, one of the coun­try's crime hotspots, Row­ley said some crim­i­nals were of the view that they were win­ing the fight against crime, adding that this must not be al­lowed to pre­vail.

"It has to be that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens and the in­fra­struc­ture of the po­lice and all se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies work­ing to­geth­er...and that is what we don't have," he said.

"As head of the gov­ern­ment I can­not say that there is swift jus­tice, even when we are for­tu­nate to have some de­tec­tion of crime and the per­pe­tra­tors are known to us. There is no swift jus­tice in T&T," Row­ley, who sits as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, said.

In mak­ing ref­er­ence to the ju­di­cia­ry, he said even though sus­pects were held, they were quick­ly back out on the streets and would do any­thing pos­si­ble to pre­serve their free­dom in­clud­ing com­mit­ting more crime.

"Those per­pe­tra­tors of crime want to be free to com­mit more crime and in this in­ter­lude be­tween be­ing ap­pre­hend­ed and hav­ing their mat­ter con­clud­ed and fac­ing the con­vic­tion...the cost of that free­dom is pay­ing their lawyers.

"They have no as­sets to start with and now they have a se­ri­ous li­a­bil­i­ty which is to pay a sig­nif­i­cant sum of mon­ey, al­ways in cash, to lawyers to en­sure that they pre­serve their free­dom and they are out com­mit­ting more crime to raise cash to pay their lawyers to en­sure that the process is de­layed in the court or that they are un­pun­ished for the crime they com­mit­ted. That is a fact in T&T and we bet­ter face up to that," Row­ley said.

And in the midst of all of this, he said, it ap­peared that the Po­lice Ser­vice was "per­ma­nent­ly over­whelmed" by this sit­u­a­tion.

Say­ing there was a "fair­ly well re­sourced" Po­lice Ser­vice the PM said cit­i­zens ex­pect­ed per­pe­tra­tors to be held ac­count­able and there­fore the ef­forts of the po­lice must cre­ate safe­ty and com­fort.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed his call for po­lice of­fi­cers must get out of their ve­hi­cles and of­fices and walk through the com­mu­ni­ties to re­build trust which was so bad­ly lack­ing through­out the coun­try.

He urged of­fi­cers to en­sure there was that "hu­man con­tact" es­pe­cial­ly in chal­leng­ing ar­eas.

"Be­cause if you do that many peo­ple would have a dif­fer­ent view of the Po­lice Ser­vice. The one thing that would guar­an­tee per­pet­u­al fail­ure in a dis­trict like this is if the sen­ti­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty is that the po­lice is the en­e­my and that the uni­form that the po­lice wears is a sym­bol of op­pres­sion or lack of car­ing.

"Come down on the streets and talk to those who need the po­lice. Re­move that sen­ti­ment that the po­lice is against or that the com­mu­ni­ty is one of a war-zone. I get the im­pres­sion that there are cer­tain dis­tricts that are viewed in a par­tic­u­lar way," Row­ley said.

He said some peo­ple, whom he re­ferred to as "imps," must not be al­lowed to be­lieve they had con­trol of any street in this coun­try.

Row­ley said he hoped the new fa­cil­i­ty would im­prove the in­for­ma­tion gath­er­ing skills, adding that it would al­so en­hance the east Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty.