KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) and the fail­ure of the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) Bill, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime plan will re­main large­ly un­changed from what’s been done over the years.

Alexan­der yes­ter­day said Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and his team, along with Gold Com­man­der Suzette Mar­tin, will con­tin­ue to over­see what the TTPS has done over the years to en­sure safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty across the is­land.

“What you can ex­pect is the same thing we have been get­ting over the years, now un­der a dif­fer­ent com­mand, the Com­mis­sion­er and his team and the Gold Com­man­der,” Alexan­der said dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress me­dia con­fer­ence in the VIP Lounge at the Grand Stand, Port-of-Spain.

“The TTPS at this time, to­geth­er with all sup­port­ing agen­cies, will be per­form­ing their du­ties all over this coun­try, some of them strate­gi­cal­ly placed in or­der to ac­com­mo­date any sit­u­a­tion that con­fronts them. As it re­lates to the crime plan, all is well.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­is­ter al­so warned crim­i­nals of con­se­quences for bad be­hav­iour in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture.

Alexan­der said he wants crim­i­nal el­e­ments to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove to the world that they have changed their ways or face the con­se­quences to come.

He said, “The next cou­ple months, if you fail to take heed, will re­sult in the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tions be­ing tak­en against you.”

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Alexan­der to in­quire if he was hint­ing at an­oth­er SoE in the com­ing months, he did not re­spond.

His state­ment comes two weeks af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she’s not afraid to im­pose an­oth­er SoE if crim­i­nals don’t be­have.

Re­spond­ing to the non-an­nounce­ment of changes to the state’s an­ti-crime plan, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing con­trived lock­downs and SoEs as a po­lit­i­cal tool to con­trol spe­cif­ic ar­eas rather than ad­dress­ing the root cause of crime in this coun­try.

Gon­za­les said, “It’s clear that the re­al crime plan of this Gov­ern­ment is ei­ther a con­trived State of Emer­gency or ZOSO to lock down con­stituen­cies that are seen and re­gard­ed as ‘PNM.’ The ut­ter­ances of the Prime Min­is­ter and some of her own min­is­ters con­firm this. They have no plan to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, re­form or pris­ons, re­vamp our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, etc. They dis­man­tled youth and train­ing pro­grammes that con­tributed to crime re­duc­tion e.g. MY­LAT, CC­Corp, YHAP just to name a few.”

Gon­za­les al­so ques­tioned the sta­tus of the al­leged na­tion­al threats that led to call­ing the SoE.

“They nev­er gave the coun­try a feed­back on the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the so-called na­tion­al threats that led to the call­ing of an SoE in T&T. Who were ar­rest­ed?” he added.

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says a change in lead­er­ship at any lev­el, TTPS, Gov­ern­ment, etc, will have ei­ther a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive ef­fect on crime. As such, he said he be­lieves Alexan­der is to­tal­ly wrong, adding that it is not a cut-and-paste strat­e­gy. In the ab­sence of a SoE and ZOSOs, he said they need to step up to trans­form the TTPS.