Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says that en­hanced tech­nol­o­gy and train­ing cour­tesy the US gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in deal­ing with crime-fight­ing, will be in­tro­duced to T&T.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day af­ter­noon, Alexan­der re­ferred to on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the US mil­i­tary and the T&T De­fence Force, in­clud­ing joint train­ing ex­er­cis­es last month in­volv­ing the 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU).

Alexan­der said the TTPS in the past has ben­e­fit­ed from sim­i­lar pro­grammes with US-based agen­cies like the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI), the Al­co­hol, To­bac­co and Firearms (ATF) Bu­reau and the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA).

Re­fer­ring to train­ing cours­es, where lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers were sent abroad to learn from these agen­cies on the lat­est in in­ves­tiga­tive tech­niques and trends af­fect­ing the wider re­gion.

Alexan­der said re­cent con­ver­sa­tions with US of­fi­cials were pro­duc­tive, not­ing their will­ing­ness to im­ple­ment tech­nol­o­gy-based crime-fight­ing re­sources.

“There’s a list of ac­tiv­i­ties con­cern­ing law en­force­ment and tech­nol­o­gy that the Amer­i­cans have spo­ken to us con­cern­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, that they in­tend to in­tro­duce to us and we in­tend to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly.

“A long list of law en­force­ment (deal­ing with) gangs that we in­tend to par­tic­i­pate with and I grace­ful­ly await.”

When asked if the TTPS in par­tic­u­lar will be ben­e­fit­ing from for­mal train­ing pro­grammes sim­i­lar to joint mil­i­tary ini­tia­tives be­tween the US and T&T, Alexan­der said such en­gage­ments nev­er end­ed for lo­cal po­lice, not­ing that a Latin Amer­i­can coun­try was in­volved in re­cent train­ing with of­fi­cers.

Re­fer­ring to of­fi­cer-ex­change pro­grammes where some lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers were in­vit­ed to at­tend work­shops and pro­grammes abroad, Alexan­der said he was op­ti­mistic that the re­cent ini­tia­tives would ben­e­fit the TTPS as an in­sti­tu­tion.

“So no one or two of­fi­cers from any spe­cial sec­tion... it will help every­one.

“A po­lice of­fi­cer should not be op­er­at­ing like he is op­er­at­ing in the 1960s; he must be a first-world po­lice of­fi­cer in his think­ing and train­ing.”

Alexan­der al­so re­vealed that ef­forts were un­der­way to in­tro­duce a new bal­lis­tic-test­ing sys­tem that would trace bul­lets, shell cas­ings and oth­er pro­jec­tiles with a high­er de­gree of ac­cu­ra­cy.

He main­tained that while he could not di­vulge too many de­tails on the sys­tem, it would be a crit­i­cal step to en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty among the po­lice them­selves.

“It’s about ac­count­abil­i­ty be­cause every round that is is­sued in T&T would be ac­count­ed for.

“It’s about ac­count­abil­i­ty and the restora­tion of trust and con­fi­dence in the au­thor­i­ty, but the pro­grammes the Amer­i­cans are bring­ing to us—it’s con­tin­u­ous and we can’t wait for the new stage of de­vel­op­ment for our of­fi­cers and the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty as a whole.”

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, pres­i­dent of the Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA), ASP Ish­mael Pitt said any train­ing of­fered by re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment bod­ies would be ap­pre­ci­at­ed in a bid to strength­en lo­cal ca­pac­i­ties.