KEVON FELMINE
Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says the co­caine that washed up at Ca­noe Bay, To­ba­go, may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be linked to the over­turned Gulf­stream barge leak­ing diesel fu­el off To­ba­go. 

Hinds was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion in the Sen­ate from Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, who asked, giv­en the re­cent dis­cov­ery of tac­ti­cal gear, po­lice uni­forms and a white pow­dery sub­stance near the over­turned oil tanker in To­ba­go, whether there was a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ori­gin and own­er­ship of the items.

Hinds said based on fresh in­for­ma­tion from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, there was the dis­cov­ery of a pack­et of a sol­id, creamish sub­stance at Ca­noe Bay and it found to be co­caine.

"That was found, ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, some 250 me­tres away from the wrecked, and yet uniden­ti­fied ves­sel that has been spo­ken wide­ly about, with­in re­cent times, that ran aground on a reef in that area off To­ba­go. Mr Pres­i­dent, based on the in­for­ma­tion from the po­lice, on the bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties, it ap­pears to them, thus far, and the mat­ter is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, that the pack­age found was not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­lat­ed to that ves­sel," Hinds said.

Hinds said ac­cord­ing to po­lice in­for­ma­tion, they found no po­lice uni­form or tac­ti­cal gear along with the co­caine. Not­ing that Mark de­scribed the ves­sel as an oil tanker, he said the mat­ter and oth­ers were still un­de­ter­mined as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

Mark at­tempt­ed to ask Hinds about a news­pa­per re­port on Mon­day, where po­lice found tac­ti­cal wear and po­lice uni­forms in Ca­paro. How­ev­er, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Nigel Dr Fre­itas said the ques­tion did not arise. De Fre­itas al­so did not al­low Mark's ques­tion on whether co­caine wash­ing ashore was an­oth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of a com­plete break­down of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

Re­spond­ing to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards' re­quest for the num­ber of peo­ple cur­rent­ly on re­mand in prison, Hinds said there were 2,053, con­sist­ing of 1,985 males and 68 fe­males. 

Giv­ing a break­down of num­ber of new pris­on­ers or­dered on re­mand from 2018 to 2023, he said there were 2,790 in 2018; 2,200 in 2019; 1,633 in 2020; 1,768 in 2021; 1,627 in 2022 and 2,454 in 2023.

Giv­en the cost of hous­ing re­mand­ed pris­on­ers and the num­ber of new pris­on­ers over the pe­ri­od, Richards asked if there had been a con­ver­sa­tion about al­ter­na­tives. Hinds said Gov­ern­ment passed leg­is­la­tion and prac­tised elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing. He said bail al­lows lib­er­ty to those ac­cused of crimes while their mat­ters are pend­ing. He He said Gov­ern­ment's de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion be­low 60 grams re­sult­ed in a sub­stan­tial re­duc­tion of peo­ple ar­rest­ed and re­mand­ed while await­ing the out­come of tri­als.

Hinds al­so pro­vid­ed da­ta on peo­ple ar­rest­ed on gun-re­lat­ed charges who ob­tained bail from the courts. He said there were 800 in 2023; 736 in 2022; 1,000 in 2021; 920 in 2020; 807 in 2019 and 862 in 2018.

When asked why a high num­ber of those ac­cused ob­tained bail de­spite the high mur­der rate and preva­lence of firearm use, Hinds said the ques­tion was en­tire­ly for the courts. He told Richards that the judges had in­di­cat­ed at every op­por­tu­ni­ty that they guard, very jeal­ous­ly, that right to de­ter­mine bail.

"We as a par­lia­ment op­er­at­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly have from time to time amend­ed our bail law to raise the bar to en­sure those who are re­peat of­fend­ers in terms of gun-re­lat­ed mat­ters are not put at lib­er­ty again to re-of­fend. And on one oc­ca­sion most re­cent­ly, when we tried to re­fresh that very sen­si­ble leg­is­la­tion, our friends on the oth­er side, the Op­po­si­tion that is, the front bench, they took stout ob­jec­tion to it, and we were tak­en back to where we were in 1994 in terms of the first pas­sage of bail leg­is­la­tion in this coun­try."