A se­ries of new crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of an elite tac­ti­cal unit for high-pri­or­i­ty crim­i­nal threats will be in­tro­duced if the PNM re­turns to of­fice.

This was an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young who out­lined plans for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and crime sup­pres­sion at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing in Sig­na­ture Hall, Ch­agua­nas, on Thurs­day night.

Young, who served as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty from 2018 to 2021, ini­tial­ly took jabs at the UNC’s com­ments on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and crime-fight­ing be­fore re­veal­ing some as­pects of his par­ty’s plans.

He said crime sup­pres­sion re­quired a spe­cialised squad to tack­le high-lev­el threats, so there were plans to use the best peo­ple with the “best equip­ment, the best in­tel­li­gence and the best train­ing” avail­able.

In ad­di­tion to op­ti­mal re­sources for op­er­a­tional suc­cess, Young said the of­fi­cers in the unit would un­der­go poly­graph test­ing to pre­vent leak­age of sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion.

“You need a squad of peo­ple that they know when they join that squad they are the best of the best and any­time they get in­tel­li­gence or are told that a crime go­ing to hap­pen here, a drug deal hap­pen­ing there, a gang op­er­at­ing there, not one of them in that squad are go­ing to pick up that phone to call or warn any­body,” he ex­plained.

“They get the in­tel­li­gence tonight from the equip­ment that is ex­ist­ing and they know that a drug ship­ment com­ing on the south­west­ern penin­su­la tonight, qui­et­ly, ef­fi­cient­ly they are there and as you come, they hit them hard.”

Young said the pro­posed unit will op­er­ate un­der the lead­er­ship of the TTPS as­sist­ed by the De­fence Force and mem­bers would be giv­en the “best tac­ti­cal train­ing in the world.”

He said the du­ties of the unit would not be in­clud­ed in reg­u­lar po­lice se­cu­ri­ty ex­er­cis­es.

Last No­vem­ber, T&T and the US gov­ern­ment signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) for for­ma­tion of a vet­ted unit to com­bat crime.

There have been sev­er­al it­er­a­tions of spe­cialised po­lice units over the years.

In 2003, dur­ing the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of TT (SAUTT) was formed. How­ev­er, there were ques­tions about its le­gal sta­tus and it was dis­band­ed in 2010 by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Un­der the lead­er­ship of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith in 2018, the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) was formed.

The unit was dis­band­ed in 2022, An­drew Mor­ris and Joel Bel­con, were re­port­ed­ly beat­en to death while in po­lice cus­tody. Mor­ris and Bel­con were the sus­pects in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of 22-year-old Ari­ma law clerk An­drea Bharatt in 2021.

The unit was re­placed by the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force (NOTF)

The UNC’s can­di­date for Tu­na­puna, for­mer Snr Supt Roger Alexan­der, said Young’s plans for a spe­cial unit are not new.

Alexan­der, who led the SORT and lat­er the NOTF, ac­cused Young of “copy­ing” the UNC’s plans.

“Every time we say some­thing we re­alise two days lat­er it is said in a dif­fer­ent way, in a dif­fer­ent fo­rum, but what we have pre­pared a man­i­festo and with­in that man­i­festo, we see that cer­tain types of pig­gy-back­ing is com­ing from that pro­pos­al but we are treat­ing with our sit­u­a­tion, what­ev­er they choose to do is on them,” he said.

Young, al­so an­nounced that draft guide­lines were pre­pared for leg­is­la­tion to specif­i­cal­ly deal with un­der­cov­er po­lice of­fi­cers, pro­tect­ing them from crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty as they work to gath­er in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence on crime.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der con­tend­ed that leg­is­la­tion had been dis­cussed in the past and ques­tioned how ap­plic­a­ble such op­er­a­tions would be in a mod­ern en­vi­ron­ment where hu­man in­tel­li­gence is not the on­ly means of ob­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with transna­tion­al crimes.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah said while Young’s plans are a “step in the right di­rec­tion,” they must not be in­flu­enced po­lit­i­cal­ly. He sug­gest­ed that qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced ex­perts, ca­pa­ble of guid­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of any strate­gies, should be in­clud­ed.

“It is in this crit­i­cal space of im­ple­men­ta­tion that the guid­ance, in­put, and lead­er­ship of sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts be­come in­dis­pens­able. The re­al-time se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment is dy­nam­ic, com­plex, and of­ten un­for­giv­ing.

“As such, it re­quires the steady hands of trained pro­fes­sion­als with deep field ex­pe­ri­ence, an­a­lyt­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and a pulse on lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al trends to dri­ve these ini­tia­tives from con­cept to sus­tained im­pact,” Heer­ah said.