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Monday, July 7, 2025

UN donates 2 drones to Defence Force to combat crime

by

228 days ago
20241121
Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, centre, holds up one of the drones while Air Vice Marshal Darryl Daniel, left, and Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice officer UNODC Roberto Rodriguez Codesal look on at the official handover ceremony at the Ministry of National Security, yesterday.

Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, centre, holds up one of the drones while Air Vice Marshal Darryl Daniel, left, and Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice officer UNODC Roberto Rodriguez Codesal look on at the official handover ceremony at the Ministry of National Security, yesterday.

VASHTI SINGH

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds be­lieves that the ad­di­tion of two drones to the ar­se­nal of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus will go a long way to­wards curb­ing crime. He said this yes­ter­day at the min­istry’s Aber­crom­by Street head­quar­ters, when the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC) hand­ed over the de­vices.

The two drones were giv­en to the De­fence Force, and Hinds be­lieves that the equip­ment will en­hance op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness and pub­lic safe­ty ef­forts in T&T.

“I’ve seen my­self as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty some of the prac­ti­cal us­es and ben­e­fits of the use of drones in our fight against crime,” he said.

Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel ex­plained that the drones, which are equipped with high-res­o­lu­tion cam­eras and ther­mal imag­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, will en­able the De­fence Force to con­duct sur­veil­lance and re­con­nais­sance mis­sions ef­fec­tive­ly.

“The abil­i­ty to de­tect po­ten­tial threats from the air while main­tain­ing a safe dis­tance is in­valu­able in sce­nar­ios where ground ac­cess may be lim­it­ed and chal­leng­ing,” he said.

Mean­while, Hinds said po­lice have no­ticed that crim­i­nals have a pre­ferred firearm, the AR-15, and oth­er high-pow­ered weapons. 

“With­in re­cent times in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there have been height­ened re­ports of gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties with an in­creas­ing trend to mul­ti­ple vic­tim homi­cides. Law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties have in­di­cat­ed as well that they have ob­served a pref­er­ence for the AR-15,” he said.

Hinds said sta­tis­tics showed that out of the 555 mur­ders record­ed for the year so far, 250 or 45.1 per cent of those killings were clas­si­fied as gang-re­lat­ed. The min­is­ter added that 87 per cent of the 250 mur­ders were car­ried out with the use of il­lic­it firearms.

How­ev­er, he said, there had been a height­ened lev­el of pa­trols in com­mu­ni­ties. “We have pro­vid­ed them with ve­hi­cles, we have pro­vid­ed them with in­creased man­pow­er, we have pro­vid­ed them with the re­sources they need and it is the TTPS that must im­pose it­self on these cir­cum­stances in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

The min­is­ter said he un­der­stood that dif­fer­ent types of crime re­quired dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es from law en­force­ment.

“So joint pa­trols out there in the city cen­tres bring a cer­tain type of com­fort to the pop­u­la­tion that is trau­ma­tised. It is al­so a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nals to go where the po­lice and sol­diers are, but that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly deal with the guy who al­ready has a gun and will creep along the back fence to kill some­one in Bel­mont. So that too re­quires a dif­fer­ent type of polic­ing and it’s the use of drones and it is the use of oth­er polic­ing tech­niques,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

As he spoke, an­oth­er man was shot dead at Gloster Lodge Road. He has been iden­ti­fied as 31-year-old Christo­pher Tim­o­thy of Men­tor Al­ley, Laven­tille. The fa­ther of three was shot twice.

Bel­mont res­i­dents have re­newed a call for a po­lice post in the area.

On Tues­day, Nef­ta “Nap­py” Charles was gunned down in St Barbs and days be­fore, three men were mur­dered along Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road. Hinds said the two drones would be used to curb the pres­ence of il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion but would re­quire a dif­fer­ent type of polic­ing.


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