Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has vowed to hunt down the white-col­lar crim­i­nals he claims are be­hind the il­lic­it drug trade in Trinidad and To­ba­go. "All those guys in the streets who push­ing the coke and so on, they don't have re­sources. They don't have the con­nec­tions to im­port guns, drugs or women for the lo­cal sex trade.

They are just push­ers. It's the guys at the top," he said, when he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at a sym­po­sium on Tack­ling the Crime Scourge at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, on Fri­day evening. The event, host­ed by the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, was at­tend­ed by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams.

To stop the drug trade, Warn­er in­tends to go "for the source," tack­ling "the big fish" who keep them­selves out of sight. "White-col­lar crime is the en­gine be­hind the drug trade. I tell you again...we go­ing for them. They are very pow­er­ful. No­body is will­ing to touch them or say what they know. Un­like me," said the min­is­ter, who al­so claimed there are peo­ple who want the Gov­ern­ment to fail be­cause they prof­it fi­nan­cial­ly from crime.

Warn­er de­clared, "Top, top peo­ple. I will go af­ter them one by one." In­sist­ing that he was not is­su­ing any bad­john talk, Warn­er urged cit­i­zens to stand up against crime and form watch groups in their com­mu­ni­ties. He promised that strate­gies and mea­sures nev­er seen be­fore will be im­ple­ment­ed.

"We are com­ing with a mea­sure which I don't want to dis­close be­fore I go to Cab­i­net, which will give every home the safe­ty it needs. Trust me, it's com­ing. At the press of a but­ton, you will, of course, have an an­swer to your prob­lem. "These mea­sures will pro­tect your fam­i­ly, prop­er­ty and busi­ness­es," Warn­er said. Warn­er said if the mea­sures don't work, he will know his time has come. "In my life, there is noth­ing called fail­ure."

The min­is­ter said any­one whose mo­tive is to tear down so­ci­ety rather than build it up is an en­e­my of the State. He said, "I shall be very dif­fi­cult and hard on any such per­sons. They will be no friends of mine." Warn­er told the gath­er­ing he would not re­veal any crime plan and tac­tics to the pub­lic to alert the crim­i­nals, but would hit them when they least ex­pect­ed it.

"There is no sin­gle mag­i­cal rem­e­dy to the crime epi­dem­ic fac­ing this coun­try. I keep say­ing, you could have in­stant cof­fee and choco­late. You can­not have in­stant so­lu­tions to fight crime. I am say­ing to you don't ex­pect any mir­a­cle man. Jack Warn­er is not such a man who will come walk­ing through the desert like Moses to wave his staff and zap...abra­cadabra and every­thing is al­right," he said.

Through­out his ad­dress, Warn­er ad­dressed the act­ing CoP as Com­mis­sion­er. "I just dropped the act­ing." He said crime was a prod­uct of so­ci­ety's ills and the pub­lic has been judg­ing the coun­try's crime by the homi­cide fig­ures. He said, "Crime is not spi­ralling out of con­trol. It is the grav­i­ty of crime." He urged par­ents who shun their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and young peo­ple who lacked moral val­ues and ed­u­ca­tion to look in the mir­ror.

While there were some bad peo­ple, Warn­er said oth­ers chose to live out­side the law. "We are see­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments form­ing gangs with gen­er­als, lieu­tenants and foot sol­diers, as they fight for drug turf and mas­ter­mind crimes," he said. Warn­er promised to pro­vide the Po­lice Ser­vice with crime-fight­ing tools, cars, man­pow­er and mo­ti­va­tion. He ad­mit­ted that the ser­vice had prob­lems, which he was try­ing to ad­dress.

He said he would in­crease the SRPs' man­pow­er to 5,000, es­tab­lish a gun court in Re­mand Yard, a 800-WARN num­ber for dis­tress calls and build eight new po­lice sta­tions. Warn­er said the gun court will save T&T $32 mil­lion a month-the cost of trans­port­ing pris­on­ers to and from courts.