RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As this coun­try grap­ples with ris­ing crime, in par­tic­u­lar mur­ders and a rise in vi­o­lent home in­va­sions, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says de­vel­op­ing a crime plan is not his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Rather, he says it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Christo­pher-Hare­wood and the De­fence Force, which of­fers sup­port to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in its crime erad­i­ca­tion dri­ve.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the open­ing of a repa­tri­a­tion of­fice in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Hinds made the com­ment af­ter be­ing asked to share his crime plan and his views on the reim­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty, the es­tab­lish­ment of a gun amnesty and im­pos­ing a state of emer­gency to ar­rest the ris­ing crime wave.

Hinds re­spond­ed: “You have asked some trou­bling and dif­fi­cult ques­tions. A min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment does not gen­er­ate or cre­ate a crime plan. That is a mat­ter for the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, the De­fence Force that sup­ports the po­lice.”

Pressed fur­ther, he said: “I have al­ways said I know ex­act­ly what my re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are as a Min­is­ter and it does not in­volve me cre­at­ing a crime plan. So, when I hear par­tic­u­lar­ly some who ought to know bet­ter call­ing on me to cre­ate a crime plan, I won­der.”

The Op­po­si­tion has re­peat­ed­ly called on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide sup­port to var­i­ous arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the crime fight, say­ing the TTPS, army, Coast Guard, Im­mi­gra­tion, Prison Ser­vice and the TT Fire Ser­vice, with the lat­ter be­ing “in to­tal sham­bles due to faulty or non-func­tion­ing equip­ment, es­pe­cial­ly fire ap­pli­ances.”

But Hinds yes­ter­day re­spond­ed to that call say­ing, “If I had a crime plan and it was up to me, I will lock up all of them who does be talk­ing you know, start­ing from peo­ple on the oth­er side in the Par­lia­ment, some of whom I think don’t de­serve the at­ten­tion that they have on­ly mar­gin­al­ly had.”

Hinds added: “So, a crime plan is not for me, it is for the po­lice and I am aware of what the po­lice have planned and the strate­gies along with the De­fence Force which they are op­er­at­ing.”

The Min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed that his job was to pro­vide law en­force­ment with the “pol­i­cy di­rec­tions” to re­duce crime.

“In ad­di­tion, my job in­volves pro­vid­ing all of the re­sources in ac­cor­dance with bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions ... My job al­so in­volves en­cour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing and up­hold­ing the rule of law, and tenets of the Con­sti­tu­tion and en­cour­ag­ing them (law en­force­ment) to up­hold the law.”

Asked whether he will sup­port a gun amnesty, Hinds said: “I think not. For me per­son­al­ly, that would not be my in­di­vid­ual call. I am just one mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment and these kinds of things are usu­al­ly done by a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.”

As it re­lates to a state of emer­gency, Hinds said when the State of Emer­gency was im­posed in 2011, the then Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Dwayne Gibbs, did not even know there would be one.

“That will not hap­pen with us. We are far more as­tute. So ask­ing me whether to es­tab­lish a State of Emer­gency is far-flung and out­side my re­mit. We will take our re­mit from the law en­force­ment,” he added.

Con­cern­ing the up­com­ing Cari­com Crime Sym­po­sium, Hinds said: “Es­ca­lat­ing crime has been a fea­ture of our so­ci­ety for many years.”

He said the re­gion­al sym­po­sium will “be con­sid­er­ing whether there are new ap­proach­es to re­spond­ing to crime.

“There is a strong case that us­ing law en­force­ment to at­tack crim­i­nal­i­ty has its val­ue but there is a strong case that we have to re­spond with a lot more than that,” he ex­plained.

He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has tried to cre­ate a so­ci­ety where every­one has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to es­cape pover­ty by en­gag­ing in a “seam­less ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem from ear­ly child­hood to pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­el.” He al­so said so­cial de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, in­clu­sive of $ 7 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly in se­nior cit­i­zens grants, hous­ing grants, glass­es and food sup­port, and rent pay­ments, are all at­tempts to sup­port the pop­u­la­tion so they will not have to “go to the edge to eke out a liv­ing.”

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood Christo­pher has ex­pressed con­fi­dence that she will re­duce crime by June but with the es­ca­la­tion of rob­beries and home in­va­sions, busi­ness­peo­ple have been call­ing for bet­ter strate­gies, in­clud­ing them get­ting eas­i­er ac­cess to FULs to ac­quire le­gal firearms.