Re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al Carl Al­fon­so agrees that hav­ing sol­diers in­clud­ed in more an­ti-crime strate­gies and op­er­a­tions can make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in quelling crim­i­nal vi­o­lence.

Al­fon­so made the re­marks in re­sponse to calls from for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith for the au­thor­i­ties to con­sid­er in­clud­ing the Reg­i­ment in se­cu­ri­ty strate­gies to of­fer a more ro­bust crime-fight­ing re­sponse.

Speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion’s An­ti-Crime Town Hall meet­ing at the La Joya Com­plex, St Joseph, on Mon­day night, Grif­fith said lim­it­ing sol­diers to joint army-po­lice pa­trols was a “cos­met­ic” so­lu­tion that yield­ed lit­tle re­sults.

“We have a T&T De­fence Force, 5,000-strong and they stay in camp and the rea­son for it is be­cause they are boxed in a sit­u­a­tion where they don’t have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to come out and op­er­ate as they should. This is not a time for be­ing cos­met­ic, we are un­der siege, we are at war,” Grif­fith said.

He sug­gest­ed that the au­thor­i­ties use Chap­ter 14:01 of the De­fence Force Act to bring in sol­diers to treat with crim­i­nals.

Sec­tion 238(1) of the De­fence Act, Chap 14:01, al­lows the Pres­i­dent to call out the Vol­un­teer De­fence Force or any por­tion of it for ac­tu­al mil­i­tary ser­vice with their arms and am­mu­ni­tion, in aid of the civ­il pow­er in any case in which a ri­ot, dis­tur­bance of the peace, or oth­er emer­gency.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Al­fon­so, who was al­so a for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, said he agreed with Grif­fith’s call, not­ing that one of the fun­da­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the De­fence Force was to sup­port the work of law en­force­ment.

He dis­agreed, how­ev­er, with Grif­fith’s de­scrip­tion of joint pa­trols as “cos­met­ic,” not­ing that any ac­tiv­i­ty that us­es a col­lab­o­ra­tion of both agen­cies was a pro­duc­tive use of re­sources.

Al­fon­so sup­port­ed the need for more sol­diers to be brought in­to the crime fight, as he ex­pressed his own con­cerns about the more brazen gen­er­a­tion of crim­i­nals, not­ing that the reg­i­ment was avail­able on re­quest from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

“The point I’m mak­ing is the po­lice need the help, it seems so to me. If they don’t then that’s fine, but if it is they ask for the help, the army must help. They have no choice,” he said.

“This thing (re­sponse) has to be more ro­bust be­cause the crim­i­nals are be­com­ing more bold-faced if you will, more home in­va­sions, more peo­ple get­ting scared, more peo­ple afraid to go out in the evening.

“That’s not how we Trin­bag­o­ni­ans want to live and some­body has to be able to put a stop to it. Some­body who has the ef­fect of the sledge ham­mer is the army as­sist­ing the po­lice.”

Part of the rea­son why sol­diers are used as sup­port for the po­lice is be­cause they do not have in­di­vid­ual pow­ers of ar­rest. How­ev­er, Al­fon­so has, in the past, been op­posed to grant­i­ng sol­diers the pow­ers of ar­rest.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion at the town hall meet­ing on Mon­day, Grif­fith al­so called on the au­thor­i­ties to re­con­sid­er their ap­proach to crim­i­nals by clas­si­fy­ing them as ter­ror­ists so the leg­is­la­tion in the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act could be ap­plied to their cas­es. He said do­ing this would en­able gangs to face stiffer penal­ties once ar­rest­ed and charged.

Al­fon­so al­so agreed with this sug­ges­tion, adding that crim­i­nals have evolved to a point where they use weapons that posed a threat greater than in­sur­gents in­volved in the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

“They are not just lit­tle ban­dits, they are us­ing some high-pow­ered weapons more than (Yasin) Abu Bakr and his group in 1990 didn’t have,” he said.

“These fel­las now have fright­en­ing as­sault weapons and some­body has to put a stop to it or die try­ing.”