Minister: Authorities investigating bomb threats

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is as­sur­ing that the au­thor­i­ties are in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports of bomb threats, the lat­est com­ing against a car­go plane that left the coun­try re­cent­ly.

Ad­dress­ing ques­tions posed by the me­dia at the end of the launch of the on­line ar­rival and de­par­ture plat­form at his Tow­er C Wa­ter­front Min­istry yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said there is a lev­el of in­tel­li­gence in­volved, and all he could say was that the threats are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Alexan­der said bomb threats are a “nor­mal thing.”

“You know it is a nor­mal thing. Some peo­ple just get on their phone and make threats. There was one that was ex­ist­ing, you know that, at Rio Claro. Re­mem­ber that? So, we are treat­ing with that. Every­body, lis­ten, we re­alise what is re­al­ly go­ing on out here, and in­tel­li­gence is help­ing us tremen­dous­ly, both lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al.”

On March 2, po­lice of­fi­cers from var­i­ous units were de­ployed to San­gre Grande to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty af­ter a pow­er out­age af­fect­ed sec­tions of the town­ship.

This came hours af­ter po­lice re­ceived a re­port of a bomb threat at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion.

The next day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that a sec­ond State of Emer­gency was in ef­fect.

In her ra­tio­nale for the SoE, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil re­vealed a trou­bling in­crease in vi­o­lent crime across the coun­try, much of it linked to or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs.

She said of­fi­cials re­port­ed mul­ti­ple deaths from mass shoot­ings and warned of es­ca­lat­ing reprisal at­tacks that threat­en pub­lic safe­ty, with cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence in­di­cat­ing planned at­tacks on po­lice of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the le­gal ser­vices.

In No­vem­ber last year, there were bombs and death threats made at the Rio Claro East Sec­ondary, di­rect­ed to­wards teach­ers at the school.

The threats con­tin­ued in­to this year, with class­es be­ing sus­pend­ed for a while to ad­dress the is­sue.