Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley can­not con­firm if there is any pres­ence of FBI or CIA agents in T&T, not­ing it is a ques­tion on­ly the US Em­bassy can an­swer.

At a me­dia brief­ing at White­hall yes­ter­day, Row­ley said he met with se­nior of­fi­cials from both agen­cies to dis­cuss how they could as­sist in im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty.

The PM re­turned to T&T last week af­ter a vis­it to Wash­ing­ton, DC. Row­ley said then that T&T was be­ing “liked” by transna­tion­al crim­i­nals who were not “small-timers”.

On which ar­eas the US-based agen­cies will be able to help in, Row­ley said they can as­sist lo­cal re­sources in track­ing crim­i­nals if they sur­faced in T&T.
He said the US Em­bassy host­ed staff from dif­fer­ent agen­cies, adding the Gov­ern­ment was not ap­prised of which of­fi­cials are in the em­bassy.

“The fact that a man comes in a priest’s gown doesn’t mean he is a priest. We don’t get a re­port as to who is in the em­bassy,” Row­ley said.

“Amer­i­ca is a friend­ly coun­try, they have a big mis­sion here with a big man­date and their staff come and go un­der the in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions, so who’s in the em­bassy we don’t re­al­ly know about that.”

Re­fer­ring to meet­ings held with of­fi­cers of the Delaware Po­lice De­part­ment while in Wash­ing­ton, Row­ley said T&T and the US shared sim­i­lar ob­jec­tives and a strength­ened part­ner­ship could help clamp down on gun crimes, not­ing the weapons used by crim­i­nals were man­u­fac­tured abroad.

“In Amer­i­ca, you can go in a store and buy a truck­load of guns if you wish. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s a dif­fer­ent sys­tem, but we have an in­ter­fac­ing; the peo­ple who are buy­ing those guns know Trinidad and To­ba­go, are prob­a­bly even cit­i­zens or fam­i­ly mem­bers of cit­i­zens, or see us as a place where they can make a prof­it. So we have a lot in com­mon with the US au­thor­i­ties.”

Asked if re­cent trav­el ad­vi­sories is­sued by the US Em­bassy in T&T over mur­ders and shoot­ings late last year were raised dur­ing the meet­ing, Row­ley said while the is­sue did not come up, the fo­cus was on crime pre­ven­tion.

Po­lice wel­come any as­sis­tance

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) ASP Gideon Dick­son said while any as­sis­tance to lo­cal crime chal­lenges would be wel­come, he raised con­cerns that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds was not present for the meet­ings.

He added that se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers should have al­so been present to meet with such se­nior of­fi­cials as they are ma­jor stake­hold­ers in lo­cal law en­force­ment.

“I can­not think as to why none of our ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers or even our Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or any­one from the strate­gic man­age­ment of the or­gan­i­sa­tion was present for such im­por­tant dis­cus­sions on the way for­ward. But we wel­come any as­sis­tance to treat with our cur­rent is­sues.”