Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has con­firmed that he has im­ple­ment­ed ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at his fam­i­ly home in Fyz­abad, af­ter an in­ci­dent on the week­end in which a man re­layed a mes­sage that many peo­ple per­ceived to be a threat.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said, “The mat­ter is ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in the ca­pa­ble hands of the Fyz­abad Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. I have since in­creased se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at my home.”

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, on Sat­ur­day (May 24), a man armed with a cut­lass ap­peared out­side the Fyz­abad home of Tan­coo’s 43-year-old fe­male rel­a­tive. The man, dressed in dark cloth­ing and rid­ing a bi­cy­cle, asked to speak with the woman “for two min­utes” be­fore de­liv­er­ing a mes­sage for Tan­coo to pass on to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the man told her, “Tell the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty there is a wave in crime in Fyz­abad, to beef up se­cu­ri­ty and po­lice and doh stay home.”

He then rode off.

Of­fi­cers from the South West­ern Di­vi­sion re­spond­ed and can­vassed the area for CCTV footage, but the man was not ap­pre­hend­ed.

The in­ci­dent prompt­ed po­lice to in­crease pa­trols around the rel­a­tive’s home.

How­ev­er, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der yes­ter­day said he does not view the in­ci­dent as a threat.

From his ex­pe­ri­ence, Alexan­der said the man who went to Tan­coo’s rel­a­tives’ home seemed con­cerned about crime.

Asked about this dur­ing his tour of the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion, Alexan­der said, “I didn’t view it as a threat from my ex­pe­ri­ence, and I speak from ex­pe­ri­ence on many oc­ca­sions. I thought some­one came and had con­cerns just like any oth­er cit­i­zen, and he ex­pressed his con­cern.”

How­ev­er, he said, any threat to politi­cians or cit­i­zens would be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.

“Any threat to any MP, any Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, any cit­i­zen, would be put down in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

On the is­sue of the con­tin­u­ing crime woes in T&T, Alexan­der as­sured that the po­lice were cur­rent­ly work­ing on its strat­e­gy to deal with the is­sue.

“Right now, as I speak, the TTPS and its ex­ec­u­tive team, they are rolling out their an­ti-crime strat­e­gy and op­er­a­tional plan. We want to give them all the re­sources nec­es­sary to achieve the many goals they have in those plans. We are not go­ing to mi­cro­man­age them, but we will give them the re­sources to en­sure that they achieve their goal. So, we wait,” he said.

Not­ing that he has ob­served po­lice of­fi­cers with­out bul­let­proof vests, he as­sured that they would al­so be ad­dress­ing these is­sues to en­sure that of­fi­cers are equipped to ex­e­cute their du­ties ef­fi­cient­ly and safe­ly.

“There was a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing last night and the safe­ty of the of­fi­cers must be of para­mount im­por­tance to every­body. In or­der for them to pro­tect you, we must first pro­tect them.”

In a mes­sage to cit­i­zens con­cerned about ris­ing crime, Alexan­der urged pa­tience as he and his min­is­ters set­tle in­to their new roles. How­ev­er, he pledged a uni­fied ef­fort from all branch­es of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“We are ready. I just need the po­lice of­fi­cers, to­geth­er with mem­bers of the De­fence Force, to­geth­er with my col­league Mr (Wayne) Sturge, and oth­er arms and ap­pa­ra­tus of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty to come to­geth­er and we will treat with this sit­u­a­tion called crime,” he as­sured.