Richard Lord

Gov­ern­ment is re­view­ing the op­er­a­tions of the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar blimp (air­ship) which is used in the fight against crime by the Spe­cial An­ti-crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT).

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan re­vealed that in an in­ter­view with re­porters dur­ing yes­ter­day's lunch break of the Sen­ate de­bate on the 2010/11 na­tion­al bud­get. The blimp, a crime sur­veil­lance ves­sel was first used in T&T in 2005. It was lat­er bought by the Gov­ern­ment for US$15 mil­lion. Politi­cians have ques­tioned the ben­e­fits to the State from use of the air­ship. Ram­lo­gan was asked to com­ment on the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate the ser­vices of the first di­rec­tor of SAUTT, Brigadier Pe­ter Joseph. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed Joseph's dis­missal when she read out a state­ment to re­porters at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port min­utes be­fore she left for New York on Mon­day.

The state­ment was made fol­low­ing claims by Per­sad-Bisses­sar her phone was tapped by SAUTT. Joseph sub­se­quent­ly de­nied that claim, say­ing it was not true. Ram­lo­gan, in re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the is­sue yes­ter­day, said: "Wire-tap­ping and in­ter­cep­tion (of calls) is in fact il­le­gal. There is no leg­isla­tive sup­port for such ac­tiv­i­ty. That is why we have de­cid­ed to re­struc­ture and re­or­gan­ise SAUTT." Ram­lo­gan said if it be­came nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion would be brought to en­sure that was done. "That is a mat­ter that has not been dis­cussed by the Cab­i­net and is a mat­ter that we will have to de­lib­er­ate on in due course," he added.

Ram­lo­gan said Joseph's dis­missal was done to "fa­cil­i­tate the re-en­gi­neer­ing and re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of SAUTT." He said it al­so was done to in­ves­ti­gate "fi­nan­cial ac­count­abil­i­ty. A lot of mon­ey has been in­vest­ed in­to SAUTT and one would have to look at it to see if we got val­ue for mon­ey." Ram­lo­gan said a probe was to be un­der­tak­en by a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed steer­ing com­mit­tee to de­ter­mine whether equip­ment ac­quired by SAUTT was done in a trans­par­ent man­ner and in the in­ter­est of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. He then raised the is­sue of the blimp.

He asked: "Has it been ef­fec­tive­ly de­ployed and utilised in the fight against crime? Was it val­ue for mon­ey? Was it just an­oth­er eye or pie in the sky that is parked up some­where that we don't know about." Asked if the Gov­ern­ment planned to re­tain the blimp, AG Ram­lo­gan re­spond­ed: "No, that's what the steer­ing com­mit­tee will have to ad­vise us on." He said the com­mit­tee "will be look­ing to stream­line and har­monise the var­i­ous units (in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty) that seem to be com­pet­ing for turf and com­pet­ing against each oth­er." Ram­lo­gan said what was need­ed was "a more co-or­di­nat­ed ap­proach to in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and a more co-or­di­nat­ed and fo­cussed ap­proach in the fight against crime."

He added: "You can't have SAUTT as a par­al­lel po­lice para-mil­i­tary unit, then you have the Po­lice Ser­vice with leg­isla­tive pow­er to con­duct crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and you have in­tel­li­gence units scat­tered for a tiny coun­try like this." Ram­lo­gan said the ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion was in­dica­tive of il­lu­sions of grandeur that seemed to be con­sis­tent with the sky­scrap­ers and mega projects the Gov­ern­ment had been scrap­ping since as­sum­ing of­fice.

Mean­while, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Rolph Bal­go­b­in said in the bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day he was aware of calls be­ing mon­i­tored. He said it was not true to say that calls were not be­ing mon­i­tored in T&T. He said there ex­ist­ed the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to mon­i­tor calls in T&T.

Pe­ter Joseph Speaks

For­mer di­rec­tor of the Spe­cial An­ti-crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT) Brigadier Pe­ter Joseph says he was still try­ing to un­der­stand why he was fired.

Joseph said he deemed the ter­mi­na­tion of his con­tract as a pub­lic dis­missal. His dis­missal was re­vealed in a state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter on Mon­day. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so read that state­ment to re­porters short­ly be­fore she left for New York. Joseph said he would is­sue a state­ment in due course.