Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Some 280 mil­i­tary grade weapons - the kind used by sol­diers and mil­i­tary peo­ple in com­bat - have been re­cov­ered so far this year, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Hinds spoke about it at the PNM's Mal­abar meet­ing last night.

Among those present was for­mer UNC Ari­ma Cen­tral coun­cil­lor Shel­don "Fish" Gar­cia, who re­cent­ly re­signed from the par­ty. Al­so present was for­mer UNC War­renville coun­cil­lor Samuel Sankar, who­had pre­vi­ous­ly re­signed from the UNC. Gar­cia has con­sent­ed to be a PNM nom­i­nee for Ari­ma Cen­tral.

D'Abadie O'Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Julien said, "Even 'Fish' know when it's time to swim home ..."

Hinds added, "For the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion, we have to beat them (UNC) back! And 'Fish' done start al­ready!"

PNM Sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma Lee Sing al­so claimed PNM sen­a­tors and Min­is­ter Bri­an Man­ning were wit­ness re­cent­ly, where an Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor "was stand­ing on her tip toes, shout­ing and car­ry­ing on! Face flushed, des­e­crat­ing the cham­ber..!"

Hinds not­ed the crime chal­lenge and the pub­lic health dan­ger of los­ing two to five peo­ple dai­ly, as well as shoot­ings, wound­ings, home in­va­sions, il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, busi­ness­men "suf­fer­ing ex­tor­tion and men de­mand­ing what they worked hard for."

Hinds, who said mur­ders stood at 242 at May 31, said he'd been ask­ing the TTPS for in­for­ma­tion on caus­es. He not­ed al­ter­ca­tions con­tributed to this.

Giv­ing 2022 sta­tis­tics, he de­tailed: al­ter­ca­tions lead­ing to death (52), do­mes­tic vi­o­lence (33), re­venge killings (79), rob­beries in­to fa­tal­i­ties (52), gang re­lat­ed (244).

Sta­tis­tics for 2023 are: al­ter­ca­tions to May 31 (20), do­mes­tic vi­o­lence (6), gang re­lat­ed (114), re­venge killings (21), rob­beries (21), drug re­lat­ed (31), un­known (29).

He said firearms ac­count­ed for 87 per cent of mur­ders. He not­ed that the 280 mil­i­tary grade weapons re­cov­ered were ca­pa­ble of car­ry­ing 5.56mm and 7.62mm am­mu­ni­tion. Hinds said weapons car­ry­ing 5.56mm and 7.62 am­mu­ni­tion are "very much avail­able around the place." He said au­thor­i­ties seized 105 as­sault weapons "the oth­er day."

Hinds al­lud­ed to a "wild card Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er as he was then," who made 7.62 mm weapons and am­mu­ni­tion avail­able to cit­i­zens.

Hinds, who not­ed gangs are try­ing to re­cruit young­sters as young as nine years, al­so slammed the UNC as "work­ing hard to pro­tect wrong-do­ers."

Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings spoke ear­li­er of up­com­ing leg­is­la­tion for the Na­tion­al Youth De­vel­op­ment Agency, which will deal with all youth pro­grammes, and de­tailed strides be­ing made with pro­grammes in sec­tors from agri­cul­ture to me­chan­ics. He al­so not­ed a youth de­vel­op­ment cen­tre run by MIC for Mal­abar, con­ver­sion of Beach Camp to a ser­vice com­plex for train­ing pro­grammes and the Ch­aguara­mas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre to a youth de­vel­op­ment cen­tre.