Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said Sunday that he met with Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob re­cent­ly to find out how the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) plans to deal with what he called, an “ap­par­ent bur­geon­ing crime sit­u­a­tion.”

“I say ap­par­ent­ly be­cause I’ve been around long enough to know that this is not al­to­geth­er new but we have seen reg­u­lar killings in re­cent times and I have asked the Com­mis­sion­er to in­di­cate what the plan was and he shared that with me.

“He shared it as well with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil,” Min­is­ter Hinds said Sun­day fol­low­ing a TTPS func­tion at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in Port-of-Spain.

“I am quite sat­is­fied with all that I heard, with all that must be done, but those are plans. They have to be ex­e­cut­ed by the let­ter.”

Asked whether the spike in homi­cides in re­cent weeks could be at­trib­uted to gang vi­o­lence, Min­is­ter Hinds said not all were gang-re­lat­ed. He said he had in­for­ma­tion that sug­gests do­mes­tic vi­o­lence killings ac­count for a tremen­dous num­ber of the mur­ders.

“I al­so re­ceived sta­tis­tics from the com­mis­sion­er which al­so re­flect­ed that there are a num­ber of mur­ders aris­ing out of pet­ty squab­bles. In a bar a fel­la pulled out a knife; a fel­la go for a gun and come back,” he said.

“But I’m sat­is­fied from the in­for­ma­tion giv­en to me that the po­lice are aware of the ex­is­tence of gangs. They are aware of the key play­ers and I’m acute­ly aware and sat­is­fied that the an­ti-gang law, which is at the dis­pos­al of the po­lice, is be­ing af­fect­ed.”

Min­is­ter Hinds said that it is his per­son­al view as a min­is­ter, based on in­for­ma­tion, that there was an in­or­di­nate amount of il­le­gal guns that were eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

He added that Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob in­di­cat­ed to him that the TTPS was tak­ing spe­cif­ic and fo­cused ac­tion to deal with that is­sue.

The Laven­tille West MP al­so ex­pressed con­cern about le­gal weapons.

“In re­cent times, we have a pletho­ra of le­gal weapons com­ing in­to the the­atre. That too, based on all we have heard and seen, is gen­er­at­ing an­oth­er kind of con­cern and pos­si­bly an­oth­er kind of prob­lem. It all rests on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” he said.

Asked what spe­cif­ic con­cerns or prob­lems le­gal guns were pos­ing, Min­is­ter Hinds replied, “Well, we don’t al­ways know. The po­lice does not solve every mur­der.”

Pressed fur­ther for a re­sponse, he said, “I said to you, the po­lice do not solve every shoot­ing and every mur­der and, there­fore, it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore we de­ter­mine the ex­tent and im­pli­ca­tions of that. I on­ly talk about the po­ten­tial for that.”

Mean­while, Ja­cob de­nied sug­ges­tions that there had been a lot of homi­cides in pub­lic spaces.

“What I know about is a mur­der in the San Fer­nan­do area in a mall area in a car park and I want to say, it’s not the first time, but it’s some­thing we are con­cerned about. There have been a se­ries of mur­ders and we are han­dling it,” the com­mis­sion­er said.

“If we say, we have been hav­ing mur­ders in sev­er­al pub­lic spaces, we will not be telling a tru­ism.”

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob did, how­ev­er, ad­mit gang vi­o­lence was re­spon­si­ble for sev­er­al re­cent shoot­ings and killings in East Port-of-Spain.

“That dis­pute is among the gangs and we are han­dling it. Our in­ves­ti­ga­tors are deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion.

“So far, we are in­di­cat­ing that what you have with gang vi­o­lence is that you have in­no­cent by­standers who end up be­ing vic­tims of the sit­u­a­tion, and that is the part that is so dif­fi­cult for us,” he said.

“Our in­ves­ti­ga­tors are on the mark. They are do­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions and we are hop­ing with­in a short space of time, we can bring those per­sons to jus­tice.”

Last Fri­day, 38-year-old Mark An­drew was shot dead in the car park of the Brix Ho­tel, in Cas­cade, dur­ing the day.

On Thurs­day, Ma­lik Strak­er and Joel Cham­bers were shot dead in the car park of the South Park Mall in San Fer­nan­do.