DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) says its crime-fight­ing op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed de­spite the re­moval of a Unit­ed States mil­i­tary radar that sup­port­ed sur­veil­lance ef­forts across the coun­try.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin, who is cur­rent­ly over­see­ing op­er­a­tions, down­played the im­pact of the de­par­ture. While ac­knowl­edg­ing the sys­tem’s past util­i­ty, Mar­tin sig­nalled a re­turn to tra­di­tion­al polic­ing.

“While the sys­tem had pro­vid­ed use­ful sup­port in cer­tain op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing ef­forts aimed at in­ter­cept­ing il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, the TTPS con­tin­ues to re­ly on a range of in­tel­li­gence-led and col­lab­o­ra­tive strate­gies to ef­fec­tive­ly po­lice our bor­ders and ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.”

“At this time, the TTPS does not an­tic­i­pate any sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion in on­go­ing op­er­a­tions.”

How­ev­er, that nar­ra­tive is be­ing ag­gres­sive­ly chal­lenged by na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts. Com­man­der Nor­man Din­di­al, the for­mer di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Coastal Sur­veil­lance Radar Cen­tre, has lev­elled a damn­ing in­dict­ment against the Gov­ern­ment, char­ac­ter­is­ing the en­tire de­ploy­ment as a geopo­lit­i­cal cha­rade.

Din­di­al con­tend­ed the radar, a US$50 mil­lion mil­i­tary-grade air de­fence tool, was nev­er de­signed for the do­mes­tic “war on drugs” but was in­stead a pawn in a larg­er re­gion­al game.

“The truth is ac­tu­al­ly com­ing out now”, he said. “The radar be­ing there, the radar not be­ing there, (it) nev­er helped the TTPS in any par­tic­u­lar drug en­force­ment ex­er­cise. And we call it out as it is. So, we’re see­ing through the farce. So, they were us­ing the po­lice ser­vice to give cre­dence and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for hav­ing that radar in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Din­di­al, the in­ter­im leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance, al­so sug­gest­ed that the radar was, in fact, used in the US op­er­a­tion in Venezuela that led to the cap­ture of de­posed Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro on Jan­u­ary 3. He sus­pect­ed it would now be re­de­ployed to the Mid­dle East.

More­over, he raised con­cerns about the in­de­pen­dence of the TTPS as he ac­cused Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro of “false­ly jus­ti­fy­ing” Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

“We (the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance) def­i­nite­ly have con­cerns when an in­de­pen­dent body, as the po­lice ser­vice, is sup­posed to re­main in­de­pen­dent and be able to con­duct the op­er­a­tions in that way. And if you have po­lit­i­cal in­volve­ment in any form or fash­ion, it is po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion in the polic­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“When you have a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice here us­ing his po­si­tion to jus­ti­fy its po­lit­i­cal pol­i­cy, of course, where the pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go right now is sup­port­ing the US gov­ern­ment and sup­port­ing US mil­i­tary hard­ware on our soil and false­ly jus­ti­fy­ing it, there’s a lot of con­cern be­cause you have now un­der­mined the in­de­pen­dence of the po­lice ser­vice and a ser­vice that is sup­posed to have the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic,” he added.

Echo­ing Din­di­al’s sen­ti­ments, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith warned of a “fright­en­ing” shift in the pos­ture of the cur­rent top cop. Grif­fith sug­gest­ed the lead­er­ship is now in­dis­tin­guish­able from the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment.

“What I see is a po­lice com­mis­sion­er who is ready and able to be­come the pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer for the Gov­ern­ment, which is very, very fright­en­ing,” Grif­fith said.

“This is not in­dica­tive of the Gov­ern­ment di­rect­ly be­ing in­volved and in­ter­fer­ing with the run­ning of the po­lice ser­vice. This shows a po­lice com­mis­sion­er who is will­ing and able to say every sin­gle thing that the Gov­ern­ment says, and he’s go­ing to agree whether they are right or wrong.”

Pan­day: A ques­tion of trans­paren­cy

Mean­while, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the radar’s re­moval, cit­ing a lack of trans­paren­cy.

“We were told it would re­main for the fore­see­able fu­ture. We were told it was work­ing. We were told it was help­ing in the fight against crime. To­day, that same radar is be­ing dis­man­tled and re­moved, qui­et­ly and with­out any clear pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion.”

“From ini­tial de­nials, to lat­er ac­knowl­edge­ments, to now its sud­den re­moval, this en­tire episode has been marked by in­con­sis­ten­cy and a trou­bling lack of trans­paren­cy. Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is not a pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise. It re­quires clar­i­ty, cred­i­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty. And be­yond this radar, the larg­er ques­tion re­mains: where is the com­pre­hen­sive plan to deal with crime?”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les was even more blunt in her as­sess­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s shift­ing ex­pla­na­tions dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in La Hor­quet­ta on Mon­day night.

“If you are not care­ful, these peo­ple will con­vince you that a dog is an ele­phant be­cause they lie so com­fort­ably and they for­get”.

Spec­u­la­tion over the radar’s pos­si­ble re­place­ment in­ten­si­fied last Wednes­day af­ter De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing with the Unit­ed States to source a new sys­tem, cit­ing high op­er­a­tional costs.

At the end of No­vem­ber, the Prime Min­is­ter sought to al­lay pub­lic con­cern over the radar in­stal­la­tion, telling a news­pa­per that she had re­quest­ed it.

Less than two weeks lat­er, in De­cem­ber, the TTPS cred­it­ed the sys­tem with as­sist­ing in a ma­jor drug seizure at the Ca­roni Swamp, where mar­i­jua­na val­ued at $171 mil­lion was in­ter­cept­ed.

Dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der de­scribed the radar as a po­ten­tial as­set in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the search for kid­napped Monos Is­land cou­ple Derek and Clari­bel Tardieu. He lat­er clar­i­fied that he had not sug­gest­ed the radar was be­ing used to lo­cate the vic­tims, but not­ed it could as­sist if equip­ment linked to a crime were de­tectable.

Ef­forts to ob­tain com­ments from the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ters of De­fence, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and For­eign Af­fairs, as well as Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro were un­suc­cess­ful up to late yes­ter­day evening.