Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers say crime fight­ing strate­gies out­lined in Mon­day’s na­tion­al bud­get can be im­pact­ful. How­ev­er, man­age­ment and adapt­abil­i­ty will be key to un­lock­ing the so­lu­tions.

Strate­gic se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah and crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so be­lieve that ini­tia­tives to trans­form the po­lice ser­vice have the po­ten­tial to ar­rest the crime sit­u­a­tion.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s al­lo­ca­tion of $6.912 bil­lion is the high­est in­jec­tion of funds since 2015. The Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme for fis­cal 2024, un­der Pub­lic Safe­ty and Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty, de­tails that “key projects will be con­tin­ued, to en­hance the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies’ pre­pared­ness to safe­guard na­tion­al bor­ders, re­in­force mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties, ad­dress crim­i­nal un­der­tak­ings and re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly to emer­gency sit­u­a­tions”.

“Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, new ini­tia­tives will com­mence to bol­ster the MNS re­sources to fa­cil­i­tate im­proved re­spon­sive­ness to the needs of the pop­u­la­tion, as well as re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al al­lies.”

An in­vest­ment of $123.4 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to the Coast Guard to im­ple­ment key ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing the de­sign and con­struc­tion of an in­te­grat­ed lo­gis­tics sup­port fa­cil­i­ty at the He­li­port Base for the dry-dock­ing and main­te­nance of the TTCG’s naval as­sets. There will al­so be the pro­cure­ment of a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber which is con­sid­ered nec­es­sary by the div­ing de­part­ment to per­form the main­te­nance of ves­sels as well as the search and res­cue and the re­cov­ery of nar­cotics, firearms and corpses.

Fund­ing has al­so been ear­marked for up­grades and re­fur­bish­ments at the De­fence Force and Air Guard. Fur­ther to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s bud­get an­nounce­ment of ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for the TTPS to pro­cure new ve­hi­cles and equip­ment, $175.9 mil­lion will al­so go to­wards re­fur­bish­ing and con­struct­ing new po­lice fa­cil­i­ties. 

‘Think out­side the box’

Heer­ah not­ed that a plan to ac­cel­er­ate the re­cruit­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers in 2024 presents new ways to tack­le transna­tion­al crime.

“It’s a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to step back and re­view and re­vis­it our re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion process, im­prove and de­vel­op, di­ver­si­fy your think­ing in the cri­te­ria for new of­fi­cers and for the re­cruit­ment process. A bud­get and a fis­cal plan is a good plat­form to say new things so the man on the ground hears some­thing new, think out­side the box,” said Heer­ah dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

He added that con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to ad­dress threats posed by Latin Amer­i­can crim­i­nals.

“I am say­ing make Span­ish-speak­ing of­fi­cers manda­to­ry, not just teach­ing Span­ish in the re­cruit train­ing, re­cruit Span­ish-speak­ing men and women be­cause that is a silent threat to crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in this coun­try. The mass mi­gra­tion from Latin Amer­i­ca, the crim­i­nals and gang mem­bers are in the coun­try,” he said.

Heer­ah, the for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for a shift in mind­set if the nec­es­sary an­ti-crime ob­jec­tives are to be achieved.

“I think the fis­cal pack­age was well thought out. What is most im­por­tant is not so much what the min­is­ter stood and spoke about, what is im­por­tant is how these min­istries take what is said and struc­ture a strat­e­gy for spend­ing and pro­cure­ment and max­imise fund­ing to achieve ob­jec­tives for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and growth with­in the chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment. We need to see good crit­i­cal think­ing go­ing for­ward,” Heer­ah stressed.

There is a $1.5 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to out­fit the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Acad­e­my with ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties and sup­port struc­tures to ac­com­mo­date the in­creased in­take. Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said sus­tain­ing more boots on the ground should not come at the cost of ex­ist­ing mea­sures.

“We al­so need to look at strate­gic ways of us­ing the re­sources giv­en that it’s a very ex­pen­sive and on­go­ing cost to hire po­lice of­fi­cers,” Seep­er­sad ex­plained.

In­for­ma­tion ob­tained from the PSIP al­so sug­gest­ed that $67 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed for body cam­eras to be used by more of­fi­cers.

Mean­while, for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day chid­ed the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s bud­get ini­tia­tives say­ing they were a res­ur­rec­tion of pre­vi­ous plans, which had been shelved.

“You shut down SORT that was crit­i­cal, played the biggest part in putting an end to kid­nap­ping, and re­placed it with a unit that biggest ac­com­plish­ment in two years was to ar­rest an old la­dy sell­ing books on the pave­ment. As com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, I ac­quired two mo­bile scan­ners and they re­fused to use them out of bad­mind.

“The PNM Gov­ern­ment has proven to be to­tal­ly in­ef­fec­tive as it per­tains to pro­vid­ing naval ves­sels for the Coast Guard. This is a to­tal fail­ure on the part of the Gov­ern­ment as it per­tains to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Every­thing is a re­gur­gi­ta­tion of what was there two years ago,” said Grif­fith.

And speak­ing on CNC3’s post-Bud­get dis­cus­sion on Mon­day evening, econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said she was not to­tal­ly sold on in­creas­ing the in­take of po­lice of­fi­cers.

She ques­tioned if it would prop­er­ly ad­dress the wider con­cerns that in­flu­ence crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try.

“I do have a con­cern be­cause one gets the im­pres­sion that sim­ply by in­creas­ing the num­ber of re­cruits that is go­ing to help us deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. And if that is in fact, the in­ten­tion, then I think we’re sort of not quite ad­dress­ing the core chal­lenge. We need to get en­gaged in pre­ven­tive ac­tion as op­posed to sim­ply hav­ing more of­fi­cers, more boots on the ground to re­spond and we al­ready know that we have a chal­lenge in terms of po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ing and cou­pled with the ad­di­tion­al re­cruits,” said Attzs.