Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The use of il­le­gal high-pow­ered as­sault weapons was one of the con­cerns raised by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil con­vened af­ter last week­end’s spate of mur­ders.

Dur­ing the talks held with the coun­try’s heads of se­cu­ri­ty on Mon­day evening, Dr Row­ley al­so high­light­ed the need for “a more proac­tive, in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven, tar­get­ed and ro­bust ap­proach which is fo­cused on those who are known and sus­pect­ed to be in­volved in se­ri­ous crim­i­nal­i­ty,” said a re­lease on the meet­ing from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Al­so dis­cussed was the de­ploy­ment of re­sources in “a co­or­di­nat­ed and col­lab­o­ra­tive man­ner of sus­tained joint op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas where there is a known con­cen­tra­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.” 

Mon­day’s meet­ing was at­tend­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers Ju­nior Ben­jamin, Natasha George, Suzette Mar­tin and the heads of the ten di­vi­sions of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Al­so present was Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe and Di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency Brigadier Gen­er­al (Ret) An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer.   

Dr Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port of the ser­vices, in par­tic­u­lar the TTPS, in car­ry­ing out their du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, pro­vid­ed that “they are al­ways done with­in the le­gal pa­ra­me­ters.”

The vic­tims of the week­end blood­shed in­clud­ed three men who were gunned down out­side Piz­za Boys out­let in Cunu­pia on Sun­day af­ter­noon and Rio Claro busi­ness­woman Caris­sa Ram­rat­tan who was shot dead short­ly af­ter drop­ping off her ve­hi­cle to be ser­viced at Toy­ota Trinidad, South Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day.  

Com­ment­ing on the talks, a for­mer se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said the strate­gies dis­cussed could be ef­fec­tive once ex­e­cut­ed in an or­der­ly and da­ta-dri­ven man­ner.

“It must be an or­gan­ised ini­tia­tive. Just putting peo­ple out there and then look­ing at hot spot ar­eas ... you may have hot spot ar­eas where the in­ci­dents hap­pen, but the peo­ple who are com­mit­ting the of­fences don’t live in the hot spot ar­eas, they come from dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions.

The for­mer of­fi­cer, who has a deep un­der­stand­ing of po­lice op­er­a­tions, said in ad­di­tion to the reg­u­lar pa­trols and search ex­er­cis­es promised by the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive, they must al­so di­al in on the ri­val­ries be­tween gang mem­bers to en­sure a clin­i­cal re­sponse.

“The ex­er­cise must be in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven, must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion where the peo­ple com­ing from and the oth­er as­pects that re­late to gang vi­o­lence. The in­tel­li­gence must get on top of what is hap­pen­ing so that they can in fact do more pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures and one way of do­ing so is to have mas­sive pres­ence,” he said.