SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says legal­ly is­sued firearms are now be­ing used to com­mit crime in T&T.

Hinds made the com­ment while re­spond­ing to a mo­tion brought in the Sen­ate by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing mat­ters for ad­journ­ment, Mark called on the Gov­ern­ment to “lev­el” with cit­i­zens about their crime-fight­ing ef­forts. He said with over 500 mur­ders al­ready for the year, T&T was in its most vi­o­lent pe­ri­od since the 1960s.

“We are say­ing on be­half of the cit­i­zens that the Gov­ern­ment has to get off and do some­thing prop­er­ly to bring about a change. And don’t even tell me about the Bail Bill, don’t tell about no Bail Bill, those things have failed,” Mark said.

He said pro­jec­tions were show­ing the mur­der rate cross­ing 630 by the end of the year. The mur­der toll as of yes­ter­day was 522.

Mark said un­em­ploy­ment was al­so con­tribut­ing to crime.

In his re­sponse, Hinds re­fut­ed this.

“We are sat­is­fied, though al­ways work­ing for more, be­ing cre­ative and look­ing for more, we are sat­is­fied there are suf­fi­cient op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to our young peo­ple, so they do not have nec­es­sar­i­ly to as­sume a lifestyle of crime,” Hinds said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment has been pro­vid­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) with all it needs to ef­fec­tive­ly de­tect and pre­vent crime and catch crim­i­nals.

Hinds said apart from mur­ders, all oth­er se­ri­ous crime was down.

How­ev­er, he said act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob has alert­ed him that there is now an is­sue with legal­ly is­sued firearms be­ing used to com­mit crimes.

“We are now find­ing out that le­gal weapons have emerged as a prob­lem to us in Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in­formed me yes­ter­day that 108 legal­ly is­sued weapons have been fea­tured in se­ri­ous is­sues gain­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice,” Hinds said.

He said there were four mur­ders in these 108 in­ci­dents.

Al­though he said le­gal guns had be­come a prob­lem, Hinds did not elab­o­rate fur­ther, in­stead say­ing it was an is­sue for an­oth­er day.

He boast­ed that po­lice have been us­ing a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven ap­proach to crime-fight­ing, which he said has been work­ing well so far.

“In this sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly dri­ven ini­tia­tive, which utilis­es da­ta pro­duced from CA­PA (Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis) and it maps out zones and beats and it is guid­ed by GPS da­ta in ge­ofenced ar­eas, and di­vi­sion­al com­mand cen­ters have di­rect lo­cal con­trol of what is hap­pen­ing and they mo­bilise their re­sources ac­cord­ing­ly,” Hinds said.

He said po­lice have been in­ter­cept­ing crim­i­nals, ar­rest­ing them and seiz­ing guns and drugs us­ing this sys­tem.

He said the High­way Pa­trol Unit has al­so been trans­formed in­to the Traf­fic and Crime De­tec­tion Unit, with of­fi­cers now trained to re­spond and in­ves­ti­gate cas­es where il­le­gal guns and drugs are found dur­ing traf­fic stops.

“When they ar­rest some­body, as hap­pened two weeks ago on the road and they find any­thing in the mo­tor­car, it’s no longer just a tick­et, those very po­lice of­fi­cers get in­volved in a com­plete in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Re­cent­ly out of that, they went to a home and they found guns and I am very im­pressed by that tech­nique by the po­lice,” he said.

He said through its gun re­trieval pro­gramme with oth­er arms of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the TTPS has re­cov­ered over 500 il­le­gal firearms for the year so far.

Hinds said on Mon­day, he al­so got ap­proval to pro­vide more ve­hi­cles to the TTPS.

Dis­miss­ing Mark and the mo­tion, Hinds said the TTPS now has all the re­sources it needs to tack­le crime.

“I now have in my pos­ses­sion a doc­u­ment from the Com­mis­sion­er stat­ing that the po­lice ser­vice is re­al­ly with all the re­sources it needs and it’s just to go out there and con­tin­ue this fight, so this sug­ges­tion that the Gov­ern­ment has failed is in it­self a fail­ure and Sen­a­tor Mark and this mo­tion should be flat­ly re­ject­ed,” Hinds said.