Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds met with the man­age­ment and staff of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (TTF­SC) in St. James to dis­cuss the on­go­ing up­grade of in­fra­struc­ture at the fa­cil­i­ty. Dur­ing his vis­it, Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald thanked all mem­bers of staff for the ser­vice they pro­vide and re­mind­ed them of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to im­prove this coun­try’s crime de­tec­tion rate. The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty:

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty the Ho­n­ourable Fitzger­ald Hinds M.P. met to­day, Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 20, 2021, with the man­age­ment and staff of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (TTF­SC) in St. James.

The Min­is­ter first met with TTF­SC Man­age­ment to dis­cuss the on­go­ing up­grade of in­fra­struc­ture at the fa­cil­i­ty; the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s work pro­gramme, geared to quick­en pro­cess­ing of ev­i­dence re­lat­ing to firearms used in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly bal­lis­tic ma­te­r­i­al com­par­isons; as well as the re­cent­ly op­er­a­tional­ized DNA Mod­u­lar Unit, which will be re­spon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing DNA pro­files for pros­e­cut­ing crim­i­nal mat­ters in court.

Min­is­ter Hinds not­ed that the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre is an es­sen­tial el­e­ment of the coun­try’s crime fight­ing ar­se­nal, adding that the work con­duct­ed by its staff con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to en­hanc­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The Min­is­ter thanked all mem­bers of staff for the ser­vice they pro­vide and re­mind­ed them of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to im­prove this coun­try’s crime de­tec­tion rate.

He stat­ed that the var­i­ous analy­ses they gen­er­ate will strength­en the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion process. The Min­is­ter en­cour­aged staff to re­main com­mit­ted to ex­e­cut­ing their du­ties and as­sured them that the Min­istry’s Ex­ec­u­tive is in fre­quent con­tact with the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre lead­er­ship, and is work­ing to ad­dress the op­er­a­tional chal­lenges iden­ti­fied.

Al­so present at the meet­ing were Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries (Ag.) of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mr. Gary Joseph and Ms. Nata­ki At­i­ba-Dilchan; Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (Ag.) Ms. Denise Phillip; Di­rec­tor (Ag.) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre Mr. Der­rick Sankar and Deputy Di­rec­tor (Ag.) Ms. Michelle Nas­seir.