Kei­th Scot­land earned a law de­gree; prac­tised law for more than 24 years; was elect­ed and served as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment; chaired the com­mit­tee of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; and was ap­point­ed a se­nior coun­sel.

On Thurs­day, he was as­signed, ar­guably, his most dif­fi­cult task yet by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as a min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; amid a dras­tic spike in mur­ders and a con­tin­ued crime cri­sis, he has been asked to over­see the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), im­mi­gra­tion and drug en­force­ment.

But who is the man that the Prime Min­is­ter be­lieves is the best op­tion to as­sist Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds at this crit­i­cal junc­ture? The Sun­day Guardian pro­files the man in the po­lit­i­cal spot­light this week and ex­am­ines the chal­lenges that await him at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

In Ju­ly 2020, Scot­land was se­lect­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment as its gen­er­al elec­tions can­di­date for Port-of-Spain South, re­plac­ing the late Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald who was charged with mon­ey laun­der­ing and con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, as Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader, said Scot­land screened pow­er­ful­ly, re­fer­ring to him as a qual­i­fied, strong and able at­tor­ney at law.

At the polls, Scot­land re­ceived 8,202 of 10,480 votes, adding Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to his CV.

How­ev­er, he was not giv­en a min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion.

The Port-of-Spain South MP’s maid­en con­tri­bu­tion to Par­lia­ment came on Oc­to­ber 12, 2020, dur­ing de­bate of The Ap­pro­pri­a­tion (Fi­nan­cial Year 2021) Bill, 2020.

He has neem part of 17 par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees, in­clud­ing as chair­man of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of the 12th Re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ment.

Scot­land’s first po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy came in Oc­to­ber 2022 when he sug­gest­ed, on the heels of the gov­ern­ment in­creas­ing oil and gas prices, that he in­tends to ride a bi­cy­cle to court to save fu­el and that peo­ple ought to uti­lize coal pots for cook­ing. Dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary bud­get de­bate, he de­fend­ed the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion.

“Yes, the fu­el prices are tough on the pop­u­la­tion, we un­der­stand it. Every time some­one comes up with an al­ter­na­tive, there is hue and cry on Twit­ter, on Face­book . . . I have a sug­ges­tion. For me, in or­der to lose weight, I will ride to court. I will take a bike in or­der to save fu­el, that’s my so­lu­tion.

“Well, what we say - make some sal­ad with the toma­toes and the cu­cum­bers. You want the Gov­ern­ment to come and buy gas? We can’t do that. We pro­vide the food. Madame Speak­er, I still have a coal spot, you know, where I put my coals and I roast my bread­fruit. So if you don’t have that, go back till such time un­til you can af­ford the gas, but don’t come and blame you for not hav­ing gas on the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

He was torn apart on so­cial me­dia, with many peo­ple find­ing his com­ments in­sen­si­tive and out of touch. Days lat­er, Scot­land apol­o­gized, say­ing he was des­per­ate­ly sor­ry for his state­ments. Say­ing he was hurt by the com­ments, he said he did not in­tend to be­lit­tle any­one.

“I did not mean for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to go back to coal pots, es­pe­cial­ly Port-of-Spain South. I go back to the root cause, the hurt and the dis­qui­et. I want to say again that I am des­per­ate­ly sor­ry. It was nev­er my in­ten­tion to hurt peo­ple. I don’t want to jus­ti­fy, but to clar­i­fy my state­ments. These com­ments were made in a par­tic­u­lar con­text. I have seen all the memes and Tik­Toks. I can’t blame any­one but my­self. I was not talk­ing down to any­one. That is not what I am about. That is not what we (min­is­ters) are about,” he said.

In No­vem­ber 2023, the Port-of-Spain South MP ex­pressed his be­lief that the coun­try need­ed to re­vis­it leg­is­la­tion to de­ny ac­cused mur­der­ers ac­cess to bail. He was an­swer­ing ques­tions af­ter the killing of mur­der ac­cused Nester Sam­my. Be­fore his death, Sam­my was grant­ed ac­cess to bail for pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion while be­ing out on bail for mur­der.

“The an­swer to that is yes, it (Bail Act) needs to be re­vis­it­ed,” he said.

In June 2024, an­oth­er proud mo­ment came for Scot­land when he was one of 13 at­tor­neys award­ed silk, be­com­ing a se­nior coun­sel.

Ap­peal Jus­tice Gillian Lucky was one of many mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty who con­grat­u­lat­ed Scot­land, say­ing he had the ‘ilk for silk.’ She al­so praised him for his ad­vo­ca­cy and men­tor­ship of as­pir­ing at­tor­neys.

The chal­lenges that await

With close to 350 mur­ders for the year and the heat turn­ing up on Hinds, Scot­land joins Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty as a ju­nior min­is­ter to over­see the TTPS, im­mi­gra­tion and drug en­force­ment - all sig­nif­i­cant and prob­lem­at­ic ar­eas.

“We’ve run this Gov­ern­ment since 2015 with a sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced num­ber of min­is­ters, but be­cause of the pres­sures of the push­back that’s com­ing to us from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, we’ve de­cid­ed to put a bit more of the Cab­i­net’s re­sources on the po­lice and some as­pects of se­cu­ri­ty.

“So much trou­ble is com­ing to us from the po­lice; as Prime Min­is­ter, it’s my pre­rog­a­tive to make that de­ci­sion, that the min­is­ter was be­ing dis­tract­ed by too many oth­er things when we want­ed more fo­cus­ing on the po­lice at this par­tic­u­lar point in time,” Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said on Thurs­day.

Scot­land will be ex­pect­ed to work hand-in-hand with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Cristo­pher to tack­le long-stand­ing in­ter­nal is­sues and crime chal­lenges.

Here are the is­sues fac­ing the TTPS:

Ear­li­er this year, the CoP ad­mit­ted that the ser­vice failed to meet the 11 tar­gets she set out to ac­com­plish in 2023. Among the tar­gets were to re­duce se­ri­ous crimes by 15 per cent, and homi­cides by 20 per cent; as well as to in­crease the homi­cide de­tec­tion rate to 30 per cent. In­stead, there was a two per cent de­crease in se­ri­ous crimes, five per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders and a homi­cide de­tec­tion rate of 14.5 per cent.

As of Thurs­day morn­ing, the coun­try’s mur­der toll for the year was 341. In Ju­ly alone, as of Thurs­day morn­ing, 60 peo­ple were killed. That’s an av­er­age of 2.5 mur­ders a day.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, and Ju­ly 24, 2024, a pe­ri­od of 570 days, 916 peo­ple have been killed. That’s an av­er­age of 1.6 mur­ders a day.

The TTPS al­so has in­ter­nal prob­lems to con­tend with. The state and TTPS are fac­ing nu­mer­ous law­suits from hun­dreds of po­lice con­sta­bles who claim they have been il­le­gal­ly de­nied pro­mo­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the con­sta­bles, the Pro­mo­tions Ad­vi­so­ry Board has not been prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed, de­spite Sec­tion 19(1) of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act man­dat­ing its for­ma­tion. The of­fi­cers claim the de­nial of the chance for pro­mo­tion has de­nied them the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creased earn­ings and im­proved pen­sion ben­e­fits, lead­ing to de­mo­ti­va­tion and job dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

In some cas­es, con­sta­bles who passed the Cor­po­ral and Sergeant ex­ams were still not pro­mot­ed to cor­po­rals; some con­sta­bles re­tired with­out ever be­ing pro­mot­ed; some of­fi­cers had act­ed as cor­po­rals since 2009 with­out be­ing pro­mot­ed; while some of­fi­cers nev­er even act­ed as con­sta­bles.

On Ju­ly 19, Jus­tice Bet­sy Ann Lam­bert Pe­ter­son ruled in a case be­tween Po­lice Con­sta­ble Raphael Pati­no and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that the CoP breached her statu­to­ry du­ty un­der sec­tion 15 of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act by fail­ing to take re­spon­si­ble steps to no­ti­fy Pati­no of the ap­proval or re­fusal of his re­quest for in­for­ma­tion made in Oc­to­ber 2023 as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble.

She al­so ruled that the CoP is en­ti­tled to pro­vide Pati­no with the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed no lat­er than Sep­tem­ber 30. Pati­no and oth­er po­lice con­sta­bles are seek­ing a break­down of in­di­vid­ual scores to the Or­der of Mer­it List un­der the cri­te­ria ‘per­for­mance ap­praisal, in­ter­view and ex­am­i­na­tion’, used to com­pile the Or­der of Mer­it List.

In Au­gust 2023, Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble Eli­cia Sama­roo-Ali won a law­suit against the Po­lice Ser­vice Ex­am­i­na­tions Board af­ter it re­scind­ed its de­ci­sion to al­low her to sit a pro­mo­tion­al ex­am sev­er­al months af­ter she com­plet­ed it.

An April 2024 re­port by the Unit­ed States State De­part­ment on Hu­man Rights Prac­tices in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­port­ed wide­spread cor­rup­tion by po­lice and that po­lice per­son­nel com­mit­ted ar­bi­trary or un­law­ful killings. In the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty’s 2022/2023 An­nu­al Re­port, pub­lished in May 2024, 246 of­fi­cers were ac­cused of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, 196 of­fi­cers of as­sault by beat­ing, 92 of­fi­cers of ma­li­cious dam­age, 58 of­fi­cers of mur­der, 58 of­fi­cers of com­mon as­sault, 58 of­fi­cers of ha­rass­ment, 38 of­fi­cers of shoot­ing with in­tent, 63 of­fi­cers of per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice and four were ac­cused of ex­tor­tion.

Here are the im­mi­gra­tion is­sues:

In May 2023, Hinds ad­mit­ted that there were more than 70,000 Venezue­lan mi­grants in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“That’s some­thing we have to man­age and they come with their usu­al cul­tures too, so we in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are see­ing el­e­ments of an­ti­so­cial and oth­er be­hav­iours in­side of that, so that is the is­sue to deal with as well,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion’s Dis­place­ment Track­ing Ma­trix, pub­lished in De­cem­ber 2023, mi­gra­to­ry flows from Venezuela in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go have shown un­prece­dent­ed in­creas­es since 2018.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, which sur­veyed 1,417 Venezue­lan mi­grants over 18 years old, 93 per cent of re­spon­dents said they came to T&T by boat.

“Added to this, it il­lus­trat­ed that most re­spon­dents ar­rived via boat, through un­of­fi­cial en­try points and re­port­ed ‘no reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion sta­tus’ in re­la­tion to the 2019 reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise. Jux­ta­posed to which, most re­spon­dents de­clared the in­tent to re­turn to Venezuela, and far few­er re­spon­dents than DTM 2022 in­di­cat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go as their fi­nal des­ti­na­tion,” the re­port stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State’s 2024 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port, while the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go does not ful­ly meet the min­i­mum stan­dards for elim­i­nat­ing traf­fick­ing, it is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts to do so.

How­ev­er, it al­so stat­ed that the gov­ern­ment did not meet the min­i­mum stan­dards re­quired in sev­er­al key ar­eas.

“Cor­rup­tion and of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty in traf­fick­ing crimes by some in the po­lice and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, in­clud­ing at more se­nior lev­els, re­mained sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns, in­hibit­ing law en­force­ment ac­tion. Ef­forts to ad­dress al­leged of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty in­clud­ing traf­fick­ing of po­ten­tial and ac­tu­al vic­tims at the im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion cen­tres re­mained in­ad­e­quate and re­sult­ed in re-traf­fick­ing,” it stat­ed.

The re­port al­so warned about the in­creas­ing in­volve­ment in hu­man traf­fick­ing of transna­tion­al or­ga­nized crime with links to large crim­i­nal gangs in Latin Amer­i­ca.

“Al­though the is­land of Trinidad re­mains the pri­ma­ry hub for most sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, traf­fick­ers move some vic­tims to the is­land of To­ba­go dur­ing the tourist sea­son…Some Trin­bag­on­ian fish­er­men have turned to mi­grant smug­gling, which serves as traf­fick­ers’ pri­ma­ry method of trans­porta­tion of vic­tims from Venezuela.

“Some vic­tims who es­cape re­port Venezue­lan en­forcers threat­en their fam­i­ly mem­bers in Venezuela to co­erce them in­to re­turn­ing,” the US State De­part­ment re­port said.

The is­sues with pro­tect­ing the bor­ders al­so have im­pli­ca­tions for the im­port of il­le­gal firearms. A gun deal­er told Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk that il­le­gal firearms and drugs come from Venezuela through lo­cal and South Amer­i­can smug­glers.

“The man who owns the boat and knows the men sell­ing the weed from Venezuela will get two or three firearms as part of the deal. Re­mem­ber, Venezuela is full of guns. They let you know when you are deal­ing drugs, there are peo­ple who will come for you. So every time they make a run, they get guns. So you could ei­ther use them to pro­tect your busi­ness or sell them. It’s 100 per­cent prof­it on the guns be­cause they didn’t pay for the guns,” the gun deal­er said.

In Jan­u­ary, a 24-year-old Venezue­lan nick­named “El Tele­tubi” was ar­rest­ed and charged in Tu­cu­pi­ta for hu­man and arms traf­fick­ing to T&T.

Here are the drug en­force­ment is­sues:

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2023 and June 2024, ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, there were 525 re­ports of nar­cot­ic of­fences.

Last March, po­lice of­fi­cers seized more than $165 mil­lion in Colom­bian cannabis and $19 mil­lion in co­caine. Two weeks ago, po­lice seized more than $4.5 mil­lion of co­caine con­cealed in hair prod­ucts for ex­port.

The TTPS said the drugs be­longed to a drug traf­fick­ing net­work based in South Trinidad which im­ports nar­cotics from South Amer­i­ca.

Ac­cord­ing to In­ter­pol, T&T sits on a traf­fick­ing cor­ri­dor link­ing a drug-pro­duc­ing re­gion with the world’s drug-con­sum­ing mar­kets.

“Be­cause the drug trade comes with fierce com­pe­ti­tion for avail­able mar­kets, some of the crime ar­eas most af­fect­ing the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca in­clude ex­tor­tion, kid­nap­ping and mur­der typ­i­cal­ly linked to traf­fick­ing in firearms, peo­ple and coun­ter­feit goods, in ad­di­tion to mon­ey laun­der­ing,” it said.

Mean­while, the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime’s 2024 World Drug Re­port 2024 found that “Star­tling lev­els of vi­o­lence as­so­ci­at­ed with co­caine traf­fick­ing and com­pe­ti­tion be­tween crim­i­nal groups and gangs are af­fect­ing Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, as well as coun­tries in West­ern Eu­rope,” it stat­ed.

Scot­land’s ed­u­ca­tion and ca­reer

Scot­land at­tend­ed Fa­ti­ma Col­lege be­fore ob­tain­ing his Bach­e­lor of Laws with Ho­n­ours at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies’ Cave Hill Cam­pus. He re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go to prac­tice, rep­re­sent­ing clients in crim­i­nal, cor­po­rate, civ­il, and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, as well as fam­i­ly mat­ter law.

Af­ter es­tab­lish­ing a strong le­gal rep­u­ta­tion, he es­tab­lished Vir­tus Cham­bers in 2013.

Over his ca­reer, Scot­land ap­peared as an ad­vo­cate coun­sel be­fore the Courts of Ap­peal, High Courts, In­dus­tri­al Courts, Mag­is­trate Courts and var­i­ous com­mis­sions and tri­bunals in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St. Lu­cia, Do­mini­ca, Guyana and the British Vir­gin Is­lands.

Be­fore en­ter­ing pol­i­tics, Scot­land lec­tured at the UWI, Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute, YTEPP and the Hugh Wood­ing Law School.