Alexander says Govt has ‘Plan B’ after ZOSO Bill failure

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to a “Plan B” on crime-fight­ing fol­low­ing the fail­ure of the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill in the Sen­ate, warn­ing that the State will not re­treat in the face of es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

While de­clin­ing to re­veal spe­cif­ic de­tails, Alexan­der said the de­ci­sion to keep al­ter­na­tive mea­sures un­der wraps is de­lib­er­ate, in­sist­ing that sur­prise re­mains a crit­i­cal weapon in the fight against or­gan­ised crime.

He said the Plan B will al­so come in­to ef­fect when the State of Emer­gency comes to an end on Sat­ur­day (Feb­ru­ary 1st).

“If I tell you what Plan B is, you’re go­ing to tell every­body,” Alexan­der said.

“And then there will be no el­e­ment of sur­prise. Every time we talk too much about what we want to do, it goes out there and crim­i­nals try to find ways to work around it.”

He made it clear, how­ev­er, that crime re­mains at the top of Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da and that tougher mea­sures are com­ing.

“Every­thing that we do is go­ing to fo­cus on get­ting rid of crime and the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. Some of the mea­sures might be harsh if you’re a crim­i­nal, but to the cit­i­zen­ry, we must do what we have to do to pro­tect this coun­try,” he said.

He added, “Have no fear. We’re here. And we will come dif­fer­ent­ly with Plan B.”

Alexan­der’s com­ments came in the wake of the Sen­ate’s fail­ure to pass the ZOSO Bill leg­is­la­tion on Tues­day. Gov­ern­ment failed to get the bill passed af­ter eight of nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

Com­ment­ing on the fail­ure to get the leg­is­la­tion passed, Alexan­der said it was wide­ly mis­un­der­stood and un­fair­ly re­duced to a nar­row law and or­der tool, when it was in fact de­signed as a com­pre­hen­sive so­cial and se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ven­tion.

“Peo­ple were just think­ing about crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. It was not,” he said.

“Crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty was just one part of the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions. The so­cial as­pect of things with­in com­mu­ni­ties, roads, chil­dren not go­ing to school, ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture — all of that was go­ing to be ad­dressed.”

He said the pub­lic has now “missed out” on those ben­e­fits, even as many of the same is­sues are be­ing raised by cit­i­zens de­mand­ing stronger ac­tion against crime.

He al­so ques­tioned whether sen­a­tors who vot­ed against the bill tru­ly re­flect­ed pub­lic sen­ti­ment, say­ing he con­tin­ues to re­ceive calls from res­i­dents ask­ing for their com­mu­ni­ties to be de­clared spe­cial op­er­a­tional zones.

“Up to yes­ter­day, peo­ple were say­ing, ‘Alexan­der, Clax­ton Bay needs to be a zone of spe­cial op­er­a­tions. Ma­yaro needs to be a zone of spe­cial op­er­a­tions,’” he said.

“But in Par­lia­ment, per­sons say they rep­re­sent the peo­ple. Some­times it’s not the peo­ple, some­times it’s their own in­ter­ests.”

Re­ject­ing claims that ZOSOs would have tar­get­ed spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties or groups, Alexan­der point­ed out that sim­i­lar in­ter-agency se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions have ex­ist­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go for decades.

“What was hap­pen­ing in Laven­tille? Ed­in­burgh 500? Even Ce­dros at one point?” he asked.

“Law en­force­ment, De­fence Force, Coast Guard — they went in, spent weeks there and treat­ed with the is­sues. The nor­mal cit­i­zens ben­e­fit­ed. On­ly the crim­i­nals were af­fect­ed.”

Alexan­der said crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go has un­for­tu­nate­ly be­come in­creas­ing­ly po­lit­i­cal and com­mer­cial in na­ture, with en­trenched in­ter­ests re­act­ing vi­o­lent­ly when prof­its are threat­ened.

“When per­sons can­not ben­e­fit from crime, they be­come a rag­ing bull,” he said.

He cit­ed the Mi­gra­tion Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work as an ex­am­ple of how de­ci­sive pol­i­cy can dis­man­tle crim­i­nal ex­ploita­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly of vul­ner­a­ble for­eign na­tion­als.

“No­body thought of it. Now, peo­ple can’t threat­en you by hold­ing your pass­port. Who could run you now?” he asked.

Turn­ing to the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing that re­sult­ed in the death of 31-year-old Val­sayn res­i­dent Joshua Sama­roo and in­juries to his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged the pub­lic’s anger but urged re­straint, warn­ing against form­ing con­clu­sions based on lim­it­ed video footage cir­cu­lat­ing on­line.

“The death of any­body — cit­i­zen or not — in Trinidad and To­ba­go is con­cern­ing. But ev­i­dence is what mat­ters. You can­not take a minute and a half or two min­utes of video and draw a con­clu­sion,” he said.

Alexan­der said po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in the in­ci­dent did not leave their sta­tion with the in­ten­tion to kill any­one.

“They left on a nor­mal pa­trol. That could hap­pen to any po­lice of­fi­cer in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties.”

He em­pha­sised that mul­ti­ple in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tions are un­der­way, de­scrib­ing the lev­el of scruti­ny as un­prece­dent­ed.

“We have First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing, the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau, the Homi­cide Bu­reau, and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

“This is the on­ly time you see four sec­tions in­ves­ti­gat­ing a shoot­ing — when po­lice are in­volved.”

Alexan­der al­so pushed back against crit­i­cism of the Po­lice Ser­vice and se­nior lead­er­ship, say­ing com­men­ta­tors of­ten un­der­es­ti­mate the re­al­i­ties of­fi­cers face on the ground.

“When per­sons who nev­er po­liced this place and nev­er faced gun­fire try to analyse these sit­u­a­tions, they will have a dif­fer­ent view,” he said.

“For some­one who has been con­front­ed with gun­fire on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, it is dif­fi­cult to think oth­er­wise.”

On calls for the im­me­di­ate re­lease of ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing body cam­era footage, Alexan­der said such ma­te­r­i­al forms part of an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion and can­not sim­ply be placed in the pub­lic do­main.

“Even if there were body cam­eras on those of­fi­cers, do you think the pub­lic would have seen it? Why? Be­cause it is ev­i­dence,” he said.

He said he was al­so con­cerned about peo­ple who re­leased videos on so­cial me­dia high­light­ing such in­ci­dents.

“You can­not put things out there, get the pub­lic’s opin­ion on on­ly what they saw for two min­utes or a minute and a half and then draw a con­clu­sion to it. So, the time has come for that to change and the per­sons who con­tin­ue to do that, there must be law to treat to that,” he said.

He added: “On a whole, do you know what is im­por­tant here...ev­i­dence. And the po­lice could bring it out ear­li­er, but we re­spect the rule of law. The po­lice re­spects that, and the po­lice al­so re­spects that there’s an in­ves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place, so we must be cau­tious as to how we put things out in the pub­lic do­main.”

He al­so warned that tri­al-by-so­cial-me­dia threat­ens both jus­tice and pub­lic trust.

“We get emo­tion­al when we see some­thing hap­pen — right­ful­ly so,” Alexan­der said.

“But let the process take its place. When you do cer­tain things, there are vic­tims on both sides — the fam­i­ly who lost some­one, and the of­fi­cers who are now un­der scruti­ny.”