Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Re­cent state­ments by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Cristo­pher, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about crime have failed to of­fer any sense of hope or com­fort to the coun­try, ac­cord­ing to Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice Po­lit­i­cal Leader David Ab­du­lah.

Ab­du­lah said that whether it is Laven­tille, Carlsen Field, or else­where, peo­ple sim­ply do not feel safe at the mo­ment be­cause crime is out of con­trol. Stat­ing that failed lead­er­ship is to blame, he said there was a need to shift fo­cus to new poli­cies and ac­tions, as well as im­proved al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources.

Ab­du­lah in­sist­ed the PNM Gov­ern­ment is not ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing a much-need­ed strat­e­gy di­rec­tion. Nonethe­less, he pro­posed sev­er­al short-term mea­sures that he said ought to be im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, with the op­po­si­tion’s sup­port, over the next 12 months.

“What we need to do is have mas­sive in­vest­ment now to move from road­blocks to re­al-time mon­i­tor­ing of all roads and all ve­hi­cles in Trinidad and To­ba­go. That’s what we need to do … Which has to be done by a com­pre­hen­sive CCTV net­work that works … It’s done in Eng­land, in oth­er parts of the world, with a cen­tral­ly-is­sued li­cense with mi­crochips in it, and that has to be tied in­to the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty.” 

Sec­ond­ly, he called for a new foren­sic lab to be con­struct­ed as soon as pos­si­ble, say­ing that it should have been com­plet­ed 20 years ago. He al­so de­mand­ed that a DNA bank be cre­at­ed with manda­to­ry sam­ples pro­vid­ed by peo­ple charged with crimes.

“The scan­ners at the port. That should have been in place six months ago. Those are still not in place. This is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. To­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. And that is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of failed lead­er­ship … What is the sta­tus of the 360 radar that was sup­posed to be set up, I think, un­der the Patrick Man­ning regime? Is it func­tion­ing, or is it not func­tion­ing?

“And amend the leg­is­la­tion for the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit. This is cur­rent­ly un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance … We are say­ing that it must be a stand­alone, in­de­pen­dent body … The FIU must be able to in­ves­ti­gate, and once they in­ves­ti­gate, that can be passed on­to the TTPS for pros­e­cu­tion,” Ab­du­lah said. Ab­du­lah’s fi­nal short-term pro­pos­al was to make af­ter-school pro­grammes com­pul­so­ry at schools in­fil­trat­ed by gangs or that have the po­ten­tial to be in­fil­trat­ed by gangs. “Af­ter school, co-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties in the fields of sport, dance, cre­ative, the­atre, tech­nol­o­gy, IT, AI should be com­pul­so­ry for all stu­dents ... You bring in new peo­ple, stipends for vol­un­teers, to be men­tors. This could start in Sep­tem­ber,” he added.