Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

In the wake of the mur­der of Can­dice Hon­ore, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der is urg­ing women to be care­ful when us­ing so­cial me­dia as part of their per­son­al lives to keep them­selves safe.

Alexan­der while re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia said while the state will work in for­mu­lat­ing it's an­ti-crime plan, the pub­lic in­clud­ing women had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to keep them­selves safe.

Asked to com­ment on Hon­ore's mur­der, Alexan­der said that the gov­ern­ment takes all mur­ders se­ri­ous­ly but de­clined to go in­to fur­ther de­tails.

How­ev­er when pressed for fur­ther re­marks, he said peo­ple al­so had a part to play in pub­lic safe­ty.

He al­so said in­for­ma­tion over the gov­ern­ment's an­ti-crime plan was be­ing de­vel­oped and would be re­vealed in time.

"As time goes by you all will be able to get the in­for­ma­tion which in­volves the chang­ing of a lot of things just al­low things to hap­pen.

"Yes peo­ple are dy­ing but we too as cit­i­zens have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

"I want peo­ple es­pe­cial­ly women to be care­ful with so­cial me­dia in terms of dat­ing be­hav­iours."

Alexan­der re­ferred to his past as a po­lice­man and host of the Be­yond the Tape talk show, not­ing that he would be par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful about di­vulging in­for­ma­tion over any on­go­ing crim­i­nal probe.

"Back then I made a state­ment as a po­lice of­fi­cer, not as a line min­is­ter.

"I want the po­lice to do their job, my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to give the po­lice the tools to do the job."

Alexan­der al­so not­ed that the pro­cure­ment of equip­ment for the pro­tec­tive ser­vices was not as straight­for­ward as some might be led to be­lieve not­ing the reg­u­la­tions and pro­to­cols were lengthy.

He not­ed this was best to en­sure the best qual­i­ty of equip­ment was re­ceived.

"When­ev­er an in­sti­tu­tion take for in­stance we pro­cure ve­hi­cles, some­times things wait foras long as a year.

"My fire ser­vice team is wait­ing for equip­ment for a year so its not like I can walk in­to a store un­less its Toys R Us and buy these things and walk out.

"I want to get what is good and what is world class for my of­fi­cers to fight crime ef­fec­tive­ly."

Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein who al­so at­tend­ed the brief­ing said he felt the UNC gov­ern­ment had al­ready made sig­nif­i­cant strides in crime-fight­ing and pub­lic safe­ty as he ref­er­enced the ap­point­ment of a per­ma­nent Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, the draft­ing of leg­is­la­tion for home in­va­sions and stand your ground poli­cies which would be go­ing out for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion this week.

"This is some of the achieve­ments we have made over the past few weeks and we have more to come.

"We have com­pe­tent min­is­ters and a com­pe­tent leader."