Beckles blames Kamla for national crime crisis

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­cus­ing her of “ab­di­ca­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty” in the wake of a vi­o­lent week­end that has shak­en Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter at­tempt­ed to “down­play and dis­tance her­self from the Gov­ern­ment’s poor han­dling of a na­tion­al crime cri­sis,” rais­ing con­cerns about her lead­er­ship at a time of na­tion­al grief.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has failed to recog­nise the hurt and pain of the na­tion, show­ing a lack of love, em­pa­thy, com­pas­sion, care and un­der­stand­ing in the wake of a bloody week­end,” Beck­les said.

Beck­les point­ed to a se­ries of in­ci­dents, in­clud­ing the mur­der of WPC Anusha Ever­s­ley at the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion, the theft of more than 60 firearms from the sta­tion, and the killing of four peo­ple, in­clud­ing a nine-year-old child in a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent in Mor­vant, as ev­i­dence of a deep­en­ing cri­sis.

“The killing of a po­lice of­fi­cer and the theft of over 60 firearms is not a ‘mu­nic­i­pal is­sue’. It rep­re­sents a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis,” she said, adding that at­tempts to dis­tin­guish be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice amount­ed to de­flec­tion.

“The coun­try does not need tech­ni­cal ex­pla­na­tions or de­flec­tions. It needs an­swers, ac­tion, and a clear plan,” Beck­les added.

She al­so in­sist­ed the Gov­ern­ment must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and present a cred­i­ble strat­e­gy to ad­dress crime.

“Where is the love from the Prime Min­is­ter, as the na­tion is in mourn­ing for an in­no­cent nine-year-old child, a po­lice of­fi­cer mur­dered in a po­lice sta­tion, re­ports of mass il­le­gal buri­als, miss­ing firearms, and a deep­en­ing na­tion­al crime cri­sis? The Prime Min­is­ter is fail­ing to lead the na­tion and has cho­sen to dis­tract rather than ad­dress these is­sues.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor and for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­ber Clive Dot­tin warned that the coun­try is edg­ing dan­ger­ous­ly close to col­lapse if ur­gent ac­tion is not tak­en.

Dot­tin, who said he per­son­al­ly knew Ever­s­ley and had of­fi­ci­at­ed at her broth­er’s fu­ner­al, de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “bru­tal, cru­el and bizarre.”

“This is a ma­jor cause for alarm; we are bor­der­ing on a state of an­ar­chy in the coun­try,” he said.

He point­ed to the breach of the San Fer­nan­do sta­tion as a shock­ing fail­ure of in­sti­tu­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, tak­ing aim at rogue po­lice of­fi­cers.

“I have said for the past, more than the past two decades, that un­til and un­less we deal with rogue el­e­ments in the po­lice ser­vice, in the army, in the prison ser­vice, our fight against crime will be neu­tralised. I want to re­peat that in our se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, un­less we root out the Ju­das­es, that is what I want to say, the Ju­das­es in our se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, we are go­ing nowhere in the fight against crime.”

How­ev­er, Dot­tin was par­tic­u­lar­ly em­phat­ic on the is­sue of a cur­few, ar­gu­ing that the cur­rent State of Emer­gency is in­com­plete with­out it.

“I al­ways have a prob­lem with a state of emer­gency with­out a cur­few. To my mind, it pro­vides space and op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­di­vid­u­als to op­er­ate on the dark side,” he said.

Ref­er­enc­ing the week­end’s vi­o­lence, Dot­tin said Gov­ern­ment should now se­ri­ous­ly re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion.

“Based on this week­end, I would ad­vise the Prime Min­is­ter and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to look care­ful­ly at whether the time has come to in­tro­duce a cur­few. You give an ex­tra punch to coun­ter­punch the crim­i­nal­i­ty when a cur­few is in­clud­ed in the State of Emer­gency pack­age, that is my view and will al­ways be my view,” he added.

Be­yond the cur­few, Dot­tin called for a three-pronged ap­proach: the cre­ation of a trust­ed task force to root out rogue el­e­ments in the po­lice, army and prison ser­vices; stronger col­lab­o­ra­tion among na­tion­al stake­hold­ers and ur­gent ef­forts to dis­rupt gang re­cruit­ment among young peo­ple.

In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion pres­i­dent Dr El­lis Bur­ris yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern about the de­vel­op­ments, de­scrib­ing them as a de­vi­a­tion from the moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues the or­gan­i­sa­tion pro­motes.

“This is not a good ex­am­ple to the com­mu­ni­ty at all, we en­cour­age re­spect, good judge­ment and high moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues,” Bur­ris said.

While he did not take a de­fin­i­tive po­si­tion on a cur­few, Bur­ris in­di­cat­ed that the IRO would sup­port mea­sures tak­en by Gov­ern­ment if they are in the coun­try’s best in­ter­est.

“If that will bring the best to the coun­try, we give the Gov­ern­ment all clear­ance to go for­ward with what they have to do to im­prove the con­di­tion of the coun­try,” he said.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad urged re­straint in how the pub­lic in­ter­prets the po­lice sta­tion breach, cau­tion­ing against gen­er­al­is­ing blame across the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice.

“We have to be very, very care­ful of cast­ing any as­per­sions at all on the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice as a whole,” he said, not­ing that of­fi­cers re­ceive sim­i­lar train­ing and vet­ting as their coun­ter­parts in the TTPS.

He stressed that al­leged wrong­do­ing by a few in­di­vid­u­als should not de­fine the en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“Not be­cause one or two mem­bers did some­thing ex­treme­ly wrong, that doesn’t mean that the en­tire mu­nic­i­pal po­lice is sus­pect,” Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so point­ed to the swift re­cov­ery of some stolen weapons and the de­ten­tion of sev­er­al sus­pects, in­clud­ing of­fi­cers, as ev­i­dence of an ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment re­sponse un­der pres­sure.

Seep­er­sad fur­ther de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment as “ad­e­quate,” not­ing that it pro­vid­ed clar­i­ty and re­as­sur­ance at a crit­i­cal time.

“I think the Prime Min­is­ter has pro­vid­ed some much-need­ed in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic, so I do ap­pre­ci­ate you know, the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment and the Prime Min­is­ter’s open­ness with the pub­lic on this.”

On Sun­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed there was no need for a cur­few fol­low­ing the killing of the po­lice of­fi­cer.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had been ad­vised the in­ci­dent was not an ex­ter­nal at­tack on the TTPS or oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies. In­stead, she said it was an “in­ter­nal be­tray­al” with­in the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and TTPS would pro­vide full sup­port to the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice ser­vice, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris and the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and bring the sit­u­a­tion to clo­sure.