Rose­marie Sant

Out­go­ing US Am­bas­sador John Estra­da says if he were in charge of the Po­lice Ser­vice he would fire him­self in the face of a spi­ralling crime prob­lem.

Estra­da, who is due to fly out of T&T on Fri­day af­ter a brief 10 month tour of du­ty ad­mits to leav­ing dis­ap­point­ed with two is­sues, the fail­ure of Par­lia­ment to pass the For­eign Ex­change Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) and the wors­en­ing crime sit­u­a­tion.

"The lead­er­ship at the top of the po­lice ser­vice they need to be held ac­count­able," he said.

Estra­da, 60, took up his post in April 2016 and said while it "would have been nice to have a few more months," he felt he came at "the right time for all the right rea­sons. I came here at a time when there was a new gov­ern­ment, I was a new Am­bas­sador and full of en­er­gy, and we ac­com­plished a lot. I think if I had come ear­li­er a cou­ple of years would have been wast­ed."

On the is­sue of crime, Estra­da said the Unit­ed States pro­vid­ed a lot of re­sources to fight crime in T&T, from the FBI to train­ing.

"To see the homi­cide rate spi­ral out of con­trol ... it hurts me every­time I see a young woman, young school girl, and there was one just re­cent­ly. It hap­pens so fre­quent­ly and I lis­ten to the lead­er­ship. The peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for fight­ing crime are the po­lice. There has to be ac­count­abil­i­ty at that lev­el."

Estra­da said: "If I were in charge of the po­lice we would get re­sults. If not, I would be the first one to fire my­self if I ran the Po­lice Ser­vice."

His com­ments came days af­ter the man in charge of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, gave let­ters to the head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt John Trim and head of the In­ter-Agency Task Force Snr Supt Sim­bon­ath Ra­jku­mar, for­mer head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, out­lin­ing short­com­ings in their di­vi­sions and giv­ing them sev­en days to re­spond.

While not fo­cus­ing on that specif­i­cal­ly, the Am­bas­sador said the ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the fail­ing crime sit­u­a­tion is the "lead­er­ship at the top of the po­lice ser­vice."

He al­so weighed in on joint po­lice army pa­trols say­ing it could prove to be detri­men­tal to the army. He said dur­ing a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view: "If you keep the army on the street fight­ing crime they are go­ing to get as cor­rupt­ed as some of the po­lice on the street."

PCA DI­REC­TOR WAS RIGHT

At a func­tion at the British High Com­mis­sion re­cent­ly, Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty David West re­ferred to the po­lice ser­vice as a gang. The state­ment prompt­ed calls from the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare Or­gan­i­sa­tion for his res­ig­na­tion. West has since apol­o­gised say­ing he ought to have said there are rogue of­fi­cers with­in the ser­vice who have to be re­moved and brought be­fore the courts.

With­out re­fer­ring to West by name, Am­bas­sador Estra­da not­ed that there had been "a big con­tro­ver­sy when some­one made a com­ment", al­though he was right. "In any or­gan­i­sa­tion you have five, ten per cent of bad ac­tors. He was right to say that."

"In any or­gan­i­sa­tion, if any­one says we have 100 per cent of folks do­ing the right thing every day, it is not the truth. There are some in the US, we see what hap­pens. I am not say­ing we have a po­lice force where every­one do­ing every­thing right 24/7. You have to face re­al­i­ty."

Estra­da de­scribed the ju­di­cial sys­tem as mind bog­gling be­cause "you could ar­rest some­one and they don't come to tri­al for two to sev­en years."

He said: "It is in need of re­form."

FAT­CA OB­JEC­TORS HAVE 'CO­COA IN THE SUN'

On cru­cial FAT­CA leg­is­la­tion, Estra­da said he had told the US Trea­sury last Sep­tem­ber and re­peat­ed one and a half weeks ago when he went to Wash­ing­ton, that the mat­ter "can will be kicked down the road be­cause some folks have co­coa in the sun, as you say here."

He said he al­so told the Trea­sury De­part­ment "there are peo­ple will­ing to take the coun­try down with them to pro­tect their own in­ter­ests."

Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly ac­ced­ed to a re­quest from the Op­po­si­tion to send the leg­is­la­tion to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment.

Estra­da said he is not con­fi­dent of pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion and sug­gest­ed that dif­fer­ent strate­gies be ex­plored. "One of them is to re­view the In­ter-Gov­ern­ment Agree­ment (IGA) which we have. We may need to take a relook at that."

He said a lot of wrong in­for­ma­tion had been put out on FAT­CA.

"Cit­i­zens need to un­der­stand FAT­CA is a Unit­ed States law, passed by Con­gress. It is not a Pres­i­den­tial de­cree."

He said the law tar­gets US cit­i­zens who are in­volved in tax eva­sion and ter­ror­ism.

"Yet we have folks say­ing this is tram­pling the rights of the or­di­nary Trin­bag­on­ian. This does not tram­ple the rights of or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

"We have peo­ple in this coun­try who say they be­lieve in fight­ing ter­ror­ism, fight­ing cor­rup­tion, so why won't you sup­port a law like this?" he asked.

Estra­da said pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion is in this coun­try's best in­ter­est.

"If it is not tak­en care of, Trinidad and To­ba­go, the cit­i­zens of this coun­try, will bear some very tough fi­nan­cial con­se­quences," he said. T&T has un­til next month to pass the leg­is­la­tion.