Rhon­dor Dowlat

With the spi­ralling in­crease of crimes in T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders, the na­tion's se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have launched an all out of­fen­sive to hunt down crim­i­nals and bring them to jus­tice.

Yes­ter­day, at a joint press con­fer­ence host­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ed­mund Dil­lon and act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, plans to strength­ened the four main an­ti-crime pil­lars of pre­dic­tion, de­ter­rence, de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion were an­nounced.

The an­nounce­ments came even as the coun­try record­ed 27 mur­ders in the first 18 days, with peo­ple be­ing charged in on­ly two cas­es.

"To date, we have mo­bilised the agen­cies, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. The T&T De­fence Force has called out its re­serves to treat with not on­ly the im­me­di­ate is­sues but to as­sure vis­i­tors dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od that they are safe and se­cure. The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice al­so called out ad­di­tion­al mem­bers of the spe­cial re­served po­lice of­fi­cers to al­so boost in terms of num­bers," Dil­lon said.

Dil­lon said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil met yes­ter­day to look at strate­gic im­per­a­tives and to get feed­back from the var­i­ous heads, in­clud­ing the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice as to mea­sures that are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed right now.

Al-Rawi dis­closed that dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing to es­tab­lish a DNA Reg­is­ter. He said it "will start with tak­ing the DNA sam­ples and putting it on the da­ta base of the en­tire prison pop­u­la­tion and al­so al­low­ing for the DNA sam­pling at law for ar­restees so that foren­sic ev­i­dence from DNA bases will be avail­able."

"For in­stance, the heinous crime com­mit­ted with the stran­gu­la­tion of school­girl Rachel Ramkissoon right now, we con­fined to ev­i­dence which may per­haps be led from DNA ba­sis be­cause there will be traces," Al-Rawi said.

"Hav­ing a prop­er func­tion­al DNA reg­is­ter gives a bet­ter chance at de­tec­tion pros­e­cu­tion and con­vic­tion be­cause the ev­i­dence will be avail­able," he added.

He al­so re­vealed that they are near­ly fin­ished map­ping the en­tire back­log of crim­i­nal cas­es in the High Court which will be avail­able at the end of this month and al­so the back­log ex­er­cise in the mag­is­tra­cy.

Al-Rawi said it was im­por­tant to man­age cas­es in the pris­ons, "to make sure the at the prison talk­ing to ju­di­cia­ry, the ju­di­cia­ry talk­ing to po­lice, the po­lice talk­ing to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al arms of T&T and that talk­ing to the de­fence coun­sel."

"Our sys­tem has been bro­ken be­cause there has been si­los of op­er­a­tion where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is do­ing and in­tel­li­gence has not been shared and we are very pleased to say we have made big steps in the right di­rec­tion," Al-Rawi said.

Steps are be­ing made, he said, to al­so ad­dress the man­pow­er short­ages at the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Williams, in his state­ment, said that the man­pow­er of Homi­cide In­ves­tiga­tive De­part­ment had been dou­bled. He said of­fi­cers from that unit had ben­e­fit­ed from ba­sic in­ves­tiga­tive tech­niques and ad­vance in­ves­tiga­tive tech­niques.

"We al­so brought on board ad­di­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy soft­ware to aid in man­age­ment of the homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tions. We have in­creased the ef­fort around a Cold Case Unit em­ploy­ing of­fi­cers who would have dis­tin­guished them­selves as past in­ves­ti­ga­tors to aid us in ad­dress­ing the out­stand­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions," Williams said.

He added that al­ready 42 "cold cas­es" have been iden­ti­fied.

In re­la­tion to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens, Williams said they are util­is­ing all the polic­ing re­sources from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice to as­sist in pro­vid­ing the lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in all com­mu­ni­ties across T&T and to give the cit­i­zens the lev­el of re­as­sur­ance from in­creased pa­trols mo­bile and foot pa­trols in key lo­ca­tions.

He said in 2016 there was a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of mur­ders in the North­ern Di­vi­sion to­talling 124 and in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, 79. There were 462 peo­ple killed in 2016.

"We have placed high pri­or­i­ty in cov­er­ing those lo­ca­tions and do­ing joint op­er­a­tions with the TTDF in nu­mer­ous lo­ca­tions. In those two di­vi­sions we have changed the lead­er­ship and we have fo­cused on as­sist­ing as much as we can. The North­ern Di­vi­sion is un­der my di­rect fo­cus, as the head of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. It is a Di­vi­sion where we faced the great­est chal­lenge in 2016," Williams said.

Williams said T&T had a record high num­ber of firearms seizures in 2016 in ex­cess of 752 firearms seized. In 2015, there were 691 firearms seized.