Gail Alexan­der

Noth­ing of sub­stance came out of Mon­day's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing with the TTPS, which was a mere “pho­to op” and a "pap­pyshow," says UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“They come to make you feel they work­ing when there was no re­sponse from them in the weeks be­fore,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said at the par­ty's Mon­day Night Fo­rum.

“(Roodal) Mooni­lal tell me the pic­ture (from the meet­ing) looks like a Hal­loween pic­ture!”

She said T&T is in tur­moil with the crime cri­sis but Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was silent in re­cent weeks and MIA (Miss­ing in Ac­tion). She ques­tioned why Row­ley yes­ter­day post­ed on Face­book that he had in­struct­ed the NSC to meet yes­ter­day.

"There were 508 mur­ders for this year un­der Row­ley - 30 in one week and not a word from these peo­ple!" she said, adding noth­ing hap­pened ei­ther a few months ago when Row­ley deemed crime a "pub­lic health emer­gency."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said af­ter yes­ter­day's "big meet­ing," Hinds said they were not do­ing cer­tain things but there would be "height­ened" po­lice pres­ence "which was what had been said for the past sev­en years."

"So what's new? Re­hash the pol­i­cy that ob­vi­ous­ly hasn't worked .."

On the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er's call for a re­vised Bail Bill, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC had sup­port­ed the bill be­fore but it hadn't stopped crime. She re­it­er­at­ed the UNC's brand of bail re­form in its an­ti-crime plan.

She al­so called on Row­ley to an­swer al­le­ga­tions that he asks for "more per diem" when he trav­els. Per­sad- Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment was fo­cus­ing on peo­ple with le­gal guns al­so be­cause of a vendet­ta with for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Griffth.

"If you know any­thing about (Grif­fith), you know he's not go­ing to rest un­til jus­tice is done," she said.

MP Dave Tan­coo mean­while called on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi to an­swer queries about land near the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front, al­leged­ly be­long­ing to a well-known South PNM fam­i­ly and "with the cur­rent wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place un­der Al-Rawi, that the land will be­come a gold mine... I'm ask­ing if any PNM Min­is­ter has any pe­cu­niary or fa­mil­ial con­nec­tion to this land."

UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly mean­while said the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, in­stead of urg­ing for a re­vised Bail Bill, should in­stead be in­ves­ti­gat­ing Al-Rawi, Stu­art Young and Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh in the Nel­songate is­sue.

"You sir, need to mend your ap­proach to fight­ing crime, you need to amend your bi­ased politi­cis­ing in­to in­de­pen­dent polic­ing - you need to mend your Bal­isi­er badge in­to a badge that says 'Pro­tect and Serve'."