A new ini­tia­tive to height­en se­cu­ri­ty forces’ pres­ence in cer­tain ar­eas will in­volve tar­get­ing the erad­i­ca­tion of mem­bers of a now-des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist group in those ar­eas in the first phase.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge an­nounced the ini­tia­tive at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

It was Sturge’s first such me­dia ap­pear­ance since re­cent re­ports of a plot and death threats against him, al­leged­ly in­volv­ing an in­flu­en­tial lawyer with ties to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment, two per­sons in­volved in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and a mil­i­tary per­son.

Sturge an­nounced that Cab­i­net had agreed to pro­cure­ment and ac­qui­si­tion of 25 po­lice mo­bile units for joint op­er­a­tions of both the TTPS and the De­fence Force.

Sturge said the 25 units will be in strate­gic lo­ca­tions—which he de­clined to name for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons—for au­thor­i­ties to mon­i­tor ex­its and traf­fic en­ter­ing and leav­ing ar­eas.

“The ini­tia­tive al­lows 24-7 polic­ing and will al­so be used as a strate­gic tool for as­sist­ing bor­der con­trol. So, this will im­prove de­tec­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly traf­fick­ing, and may well amount to a de­ter­rent,” he said.

Sturge added, “In the first phase, we in­tend to use it to tar­get spe­cif­ic ar­eas where we see there’s a growth in terms of a cer­tain de­mo­graph­ic which a par­tic­u­lar now-des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist en­ti­ty dwells among. And this ini­tia­tive will be with a view to erad­i­cat­ing the ex­is­tence of mem­bers of this par­tic­u­lar now-des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist group.”

The ini­tia­tive will be de­ployed in the com­ing months, he said.

Sturge al­so said the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre was not far off. He re­fused to com­ment on spec­u­la­tion that it may be head­ed by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith. —Gail Alexan­der