DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

At least one po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist be­lieves Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s of­fer to hold crime talks with Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be noth­ing more than a dis­trac­tion.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany de­scribed the tone of Dr Row­ley’s let­ter to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, which was dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 16, as con­cil­ia­to­ry and col­lab­o­ra­tive.

He said while the meet­ing may be­come a talk­shop, he does not ex­pect Dr Row­ley to be con­cerned over the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’s (UNC) plan to in­clude Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith on its team. How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that the tim­ing of these pro­posed dis­cus­sions is cal­cu­lat­ed.

“I think it’s a use­ful dis­trac­tion be­cause one of the re­al big is­sues that’s loom­ing right now is what’s go­ing on with for­eign ex­change in the coun­try and I think this will pro­vide a nice sub-is­sue to be able to spend time talk­ing about vi­o­lent crime and pro­pos­als and so on,” he said.

Ghany was re­fer­ring to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s plan to meet with key busi­ness stake­hold­ers in light of a forex sup­ply short­age.

In a state­ment over the week­end an­nounc­ing his in­ten­tions, Im­bert blamed the short­age on an un­prece­dent­ed surge in de­mand, which he said was part­ly due to “an ex­plo­sion in on­line shop­ping over the last sev­er­al years”.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad wants the Gov­ern­ment to in­clude more than just politi­cians to co­op­er­ate with the Op­po­si­tion on crime. He said in­de­pen­dents an­dother arms of the State should be en­gaged.

“They should con­sid­er bring­ing in some­body, maybe an ex­pert, some­body who has ex­per­tise in crim­i­nol­o­gy or crim­i­nol­o­gists. It shouldn’t be just po­lit­i­cal be­cause po­lit­i­cal per­sons, that’s a very pos­i­tive step, but of course, quite of­ten politi­cians are non-spe­cial­ists. I’m talk­ing about peo­ple like the po­lice and the prison ser­vice and the ju­di­cia­ry and all these kinds of ac­tors that play a role,” he said.

Dr Seep­er­sad is, how­ev­er, wor­ried about the im­ple­men­ta­tion of any pro­pos­als made.

“I sus­pect that’s a big part of our prob­lem right now. We don’t have fund­ing to im­ple­ment even some of the things (leg­is­la­tion) which are amaz­ing,” he said.

He cit­ed the Cure Vi­o­lence Health Mod­el, which, ac­cord­ing to the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), is a da­ta-dri­ven, re­search-based, com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tric ap­proach to vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion. It was im­ple­ment­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go from Ju­ly 2015 to Au­gust 2017 and led to sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions in vi­o­lent crimes in ar­eas in and around Port-of-Spain. The pro­gramme was rein­tro­duced as Project Build­ing Blocks, which con­clud­ed at the end of 2022.

As such, Seep­er­sad urged the Gov­ern­ment to seek fund­ing for these ini­tia­tives via US­AID, the Eu­ro­pean Union or the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

Dr Seep­er­sad al­so shut down the UNC’s call for a Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to be cre­at­ed to take con­trol of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, to al­low the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to fo­cus on its gun, gang and hu­man traf­fick­ing fight.

“I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly see it as some­thing of para­mount im­por­tance. Re­al­ly to cre­ate more bu­reau­cra­cy, it just adds per­haps un­nec­es­sary cost to cre­ate an en­tire­ly brand-new min­istry. That’s a very ex­pen­sive thing,” he said.

Mean­while, not­ing that some of the pop­u­la­tion may see Dr Row­ley’s pro­pos­al as win­dow dress­ing, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said there was room for hope.

Un­like Ghany, Dr Ra­goonath was scep­ti­cal of Dr Row­ley’s abil­i­ty to ac­cept Grif­fith as a mem­ber of the UNC’s team. As such, he could not say whether the for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er’s in­volve­ment would help or hurt the talks.

In Au­gust last year, Dr Row­ley de­scribed Grif­fith’s ap­point­ment as CoP as “the biggest mis­take of my life”. At the time, he said he was trou­bled by the con­tents of an au­dit in­to the Firearms Unit of the TTPS. The two have trad­ed words since then.