KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Amid calls from the pub­lic for his re­moval as the mur­der toll hit the 400 mark and talk of a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle swirling in re­cent weeks, em­bat­tled Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that his fu­ture was now en­tire­ly in the hands of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) pass­ing out pa­rade for Batch One of 2022 at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James, which was mere hours af­ter a Cab­i­net re­treat end­ed, Hinds ap­peared less con­fi­dent than he usu­al­ly is when asked about if he was con­cerned or wor­ried that he would have to change of­fice again.

“An ex­pe­ri­enced par­lia­men­tar­i­an and an ex­pe­ri­enced min­is­ter like me will have un­der­stood from the day I ap­proached this busi­ness that Cab­i­net ap­point­ments are al­ways with­in the do­main of one per­son and on this oc­ca­sion, a very no­ble, dig­ni­fied and sober per­son and that mat­ter is al­to­geth­er left to him (Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley).”

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had led a three-day work­ing Cab­i­net re­treat at CrewsInn, Ch­aguara­mas, which cul­mi­nat­ed hours be­fore Hinds at­tend­ed the pass­ing out pa­rade.

Ru­mours of an im­pend­ing Cab­i­net reshuf­fle resur­faced dur­ing the re­treat. Sources told Guardian Me­dia that the per­for­mance of min­is­ters was a top­ic dur­ing the ses­sion.

But when pressed on what tran­spired at the re­treat, Hinds said the busi­ness of Cab­i­net is con­fi­den­tial.

While ad­dress­ing the 97 new­ly mint­ed po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing the pass­ing-out pa­rade, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted the coun­try is cur­rent­ly un­der siege by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

“At a time when we are be­sieged by the be­hav­iour of some of our cit­i­zens and, in some cas­es vis­i­tors here, who take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­mit crimes and cre­ate may­hem, I am more than hap­py to know 97 oth­er cit­i­zens of this coun­try have de­cid­ed not to just talk, not to just crit­i­cise, but to come for­ward and to take an oath and say ‘I will stand with Min­is­ter Hinds’ and the oth­er peo­ple who have done that in the de­fence of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the law and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Hinds al­so said the coun­try is plagued by home in­va­sions, or­gan­ised crime and the easy ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of il­le­gal drugs.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said the trade of le­gal guns in the coun­try was al­so a con­cern­ing is­sue.

“Even in the trade of le­gal guns which we re­cent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced in Trinidad and To­ba­go and which we es­ti­mate to have gen­er­at­ed about $4.5 bil­lion worth of busi­ness was car­ried on in this coun­try, in our view, with lit­tle or no re­gard to con­sid­er­a­tions of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ... a se­ri­ous mat­ter in­deed that is gain­ing the at­ten­tion of law en­force­ment.”

Hinds al­so urged the new of­fi­cers to hold them­selves ac­count­able to the laws of the land whether they are in uni­form or not, as he said the Po­lice Acad­e­my has been able to sur­vive rogue of­fi­cers.

On the oth­er hand, he ap­plaud­ed the TTPS for mak­ing strides in mit­i­gat­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly with­in com­mu­ni­ties. He said of­fi­cers have been ar­rest­ing and charg­ing peo­ple un­der the An­ti-Gang law.

Hinds al­so ex­pressed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues of of­fi­cers Josette Mar­shall and Dwight Skeete, who died in a mur­der-sui­cide on Tues­day.

Say­ing every­one faces stress in life, Hinds said, “All it says to me is that po­lice of­fices are first post hu­man per­sons and we all face our stress­es in life and I am not privy to the de­tails around that and I think it will be im­pru­dent for me to go fur­ther than to ex­press my deep con­do­lences to the po­lice ser­vice, to their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies and to you as a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause we lost two, not just cit­i­zens but two serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in cir­cum­stances that are yet to be made clear to me.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing new of­fi­cers, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher en­cour­aged the new of­fi­cers to build trust with the pop­u­la­tion, adapt to new tech­nolo­gies, pri­ori­tise men­tal and phys­i­cal health, and nev­er stop learn­ing as they move on to the next chap­ter of their ca­reers.