Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor and at­tor­ney, Sean Sobers, be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment is fail­ing state wit­ness­es as the pro­tec­tion pro­gramme is un­der-re­sourced.

His com­ments come af­ter the state’s wit­ness in the killing of PC Clarence Gilkes, Jehlano Rom­ney was killed last week and was not of­fered wit­ness pro­tec­tion, ac­cord­ing to his lawyer.

A Guardian Me­dia in­ves­tiga­tive re­port al­so re­vealed last week that Mark Ren­ni Mo­hammed, who was gunned down last month in the PriceS­mart car park in Mau­si­ca Road D’abadie, was in­stru­men­tal in tip­ping off lo­cal law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties about some of the largest firearms and drug ship­ments that en­tered this coun­try over the last year and were part of a ma­jor transat­lantic crim­i­nal pipeline.

Sobers ques­tioned why those men were not placed in­to the pro­gramme, how­ev­er, he not­ed that the pro­gramme is un­der-re­sourced.

He said while the Port-of-Spain of­fice for the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme op­er­ates out of a clan­des­tine lo­ca­tion, that’s not the case for the San Fer­nan­do branch.

“In San Fer­nan­do, the place is too di­lap­i­dat­ed so, in­stead of try­ing to treat with the sit­u­a­tion, you have them op­er­at­ing out of a po­lice sta­tion now. So every Tom, Dick and Har­ry that pass­ing through that po­lice sta­tion know that these in­di­vid­u­als here, be­long to wit­ness pro­tec­tion. So if one il­lic­it in­di­vid­ual has a hook in a po­lice of­fi­cer, un­for­tu­nate­ly, he could get that in­for­ma­tion and kill that wit­ness,” he said.

He al­so said the safe hous­es that wit­ness­es are placed in are not prop­er­ly re­sourced.

“Wit­ness pro­tec­tion in these homes is not what you see on TV. This is not the Body­guard with Whit­ney Hus­ton. It don’t have no steel door. There are no alarm sys­tems. It have no fi­bre op­tic line or any­thing run­ning through the house. There’s no se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras in these homes. Po­lice of­fi­cers have to use tac­tics on their own to pro­tect wit­ness­es. Some­times putting a lit­tle chair by the door so if some­one rat­tling the door they could hear the door with the chair. Break­ing glass to put on the floor so if some­body en­ters the home you could hear the glass on the floor crack­ling. This is what they do. That is wit­ness pro­tec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der (Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald) Hinds and the PNM,” he said.

Sobers said the hous­es don’t even have ba­sic ameni­ties such as toi­let pa­per. He said of­ten times the stipend af­ford­ed to wit­ness­es isn’t suf­fi­cient to pur­chase these ameni­ties and the po­lice of­fi­cers are forced to dip in­to their own pock­ets to pur­chase the items.

“And you want to en­cour­age peo­ple to come and give in­for­ma­tion? See some­thing, say some­thing and that is how you treat them when they are in the state’s cus­tody?” he asked.

He blames this on the Gov­ern­ment’s shift­ing of the pro­gramme un­der the re­mit of the al­ready bur­dened Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

He said un­der the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, the pro­gramme was housed un­der the Min­istry of Jus­tice which gave it the at­ten­tion it need­ed.