Trinidad offers reward for info on illegal guns as crime bites

(Trinidad Guardian) In an at­tempt to as­suage a na­tion be­sieged by a wave of bloody killings and rob­beries, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young pro­vid­ed no new mea­sures to com­bat al­most out-of-con­trol gang war­fare but en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to call a tip line to get il­le­gal guns off the streets.

Young called a rare Sun­day af­ter­noon press con­fer­ence af­ter sum­mon­ing the heads of law en­force­ment groups to an emer­gency meet­ing to dis­cuss the dire state of crime in the coun­try.

The meet­ing fol­lowed a bloody week in which at least 24 peo­ple in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try were killed, most of them in gang vi­o­lence.

Sev­er­al of the shoot­ing in­ci­dents took place at pub­lic places and rat­tled cit­i­zens go­ing about their nor­mal rou­tine.

The num­ber of peo­ple killed this year is near 300 and if the cur­rent trend con­tin­ues it would sur­pass the record high of 550 in 2008.

In a bold Sun­day Guardian Me­dia ed­i­to­r­i­al head­lined: “The Break­ing Point,” the me­dia group called on the Gov­ern­ment to stem the crime wave.

The ed­i­to­r­i­al, which paint­ed a grim pic­ture of how vi­o­lent crime had de­stroyed chil­dren, fam­i­lies, and en­tire com­mu­ni­ties, called on the Gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to take de­ci­sive ac­tion to fight crime and re­store pub­lic trust in the po­lice and crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Row­ley did not at­tend the news con­fer­ence and did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s queries for a re­ac­tion to the ed­i­to­r­i­al.

Late last night, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced Young was re­placed as Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter by for­mer Laven­tille East MP Don­na Cox.

The ed­i­to­r­i­al had sug­gest­ed a rad­i­cal pro­pos­al to re­duce Young’s port­fo­lio so that he can fo­cus on the crime cri­sis.

In­stead, Young showed up with As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Jayson Forde and Chief of De­fence Staff Air Com­modore Dar­ryl Daniel. At least three ma­jor busi­ness groups sup­port­ed the stance tak­en by Guardian Me­dia, call­ing for an ag­gres­sive re­sponse to crime.

“This is a time when a mea­sured re­sponse is not go­ing to de­liv­er the re­sults that are nec­es­sary, we need to take de­ci­sive ac­tion, the Gov­ern­ment needs to show its un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to deal­ing with crime,” said Gabriel Faria, CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, one of the biggest busi­ness lob­by groups in the coun­try.

Young of­fered a litany of the ini­tia­tives the Gov­ern­ment had launched to fight crime but did not pro­vide any de­tails of their suc­cess.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said there was no con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a state of emer­gency or cur­fews in spe­cif­ic crim­i­nal hotspots across the coun­try.

“We are not there, we are not look­ing at that. As I dis­cussed sev­er­al times with the heads of se­cu­ri­ty last week, there are still a num­ber of ini­tia­tives that we have to put in place be­fore we reach that lev­el.

“To me, a State of Emer­gency is throw­ing your hands up in the air and say­ing there is noth­ing left. And we’re not there,” he said. The Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, said the De­fence Force would play a part in sup­port­ing the TTPS in an­ti-crime ef­forts,” Young said.

He, how­ev­er, en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion anony­mous­ly so that po­lice can get more guns off the street.

“We’re not ask­ing you at this stage, al­though if you can we’d ap­pre­ci­ate if you do to come for­ward and give ev­i­dence,” Young said. The on­ly new ini­tia­tive an­nounced by Young was the ramp­ing up of the use of CrimeStop­pers, an ini­tia­tive by busi­ness groups, to pay anony­mous tip­sters for il­le­gal guns.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion has been of­fer­ing $20,000 for a suc­cess­ful tip, dou­ble its usu­al amount this year thanks to a 20th-an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the group. Young said the Gov­ern­ment will fund this ini­tia­tive.

He con­firmed that he did speak with Dr Row­ley, the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, be­fore meet­ing, for the sec­ond time with­in the space of three days, with the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty heads yes­ter­day.

He skirt­ed ques­tions on a Spe­cial Branch re­port which iden­ti­fied sev­en gang lead­ers who had ben­e­fit­ed from $6m in con­tracts from two PNM-con­trolled re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, say­ing that he did not have that in­for­ma­tion.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has open­ly crit­i­cised State agen­cies for help­ing to fund crim­i­nal gangs say­ing it was jeop­ar­dis­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice’s ef­forts to dis­man­tle them.

The Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that he was ex­treme­ly con­cerned about an “un­ac­cept­able up­surge in lev­els of crime” but could say lit­tle pub­licly what mea­sures se­cu­ri­ty forces were tak­ing to get a grip on the alarm­ing state of the crime of the coun­try, cit­ing the fear that the crim­i­nal el­e­ments would stay one step ahead of law en­force­ment ef­forts.

Young said the leak­ing of in­for­ma­tion to crim­i­nals was a re­al con­cern and it “shocked me and it was up­set­ting to me that some of what we dis­cussed on a Fri­day meet­ing end­ed up” in a Sun­day Guardian re­port.

“We can’t get in­to op­er­a­tional dis­cus­sions and dis­cus­sions with the specifics of our op­er­a­tions but it seems that el­e­ments with­in, so the en­e­my with­in is our worst en­e­my,” said Young, who even said that a Spe­cial Branch re­port on gang lead­ers get­ting State con­tracts ap­peared to have reached Guardian Me­dia be­fore it got to his desk.

Young iden­ti­fied il­le­gal guns, our porous bor­ders and gangs as the three main dri­vers of crime in the coun­try and an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved $2.8m to im­prove the radar sys­tem.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Jayson Forde said over 100 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed be­tween Fri­day and Sun­day and seized 25 il­le­gal firearms.

Among them were sev­en re­put­ed gang lead­ers, how­ev­er, pre­vi­ous ar­rests of these in­di­vid­u­als had seen them re­leased as soon as the statute for de­ten­tion with­out a crim­i­nal charge had lapsed.

The As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er, how­ev­er, gave an as­sur­ance that this time, they would get cas­es to stick against these in­di­vid­u­als.

“The TTPS gives you that as­sur­ance that we will be ar­rest­ing peo­ple en masse for gang ac­tiv­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“We have to be a step ahead of them. We have been con­duct­ing ex­ten­sive and ex­haust­ing in­quiries to­wards bring­ing an end to their gang ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have sev­er­al gang units with­in our coun­try that are pur­su­ing ac­tive in­quiries,” said Forde.

“We have been seek­ing ad­vice from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions who has been guid­ing us and in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, you will be see­ing ar­rests. We have had ar­rests, we have put per­sons be­fore the court, we have oth­er per­sons who are go­ing for ar­rests but we can­not ar­rest them be­cause of the sen­si­tive na­ture of their in­quiries and be­cause of what they are shar­ing we can­not ar­rest them,” Forde said.