Greater Arima chamber outlines security proposals amid crime concerns

The Greater Ari­ma Cham­ber of Com­merce is call­ing for a se­ries of strength­ened na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, say­ing the cur­rent cli­mate re­quires more ad­vanced sys­tems and mod­ern en­force­ment tools.

In a state­ment, the Cham­ber out­lined sev­er­al pro­pos­als aimed at im­prov­ing crime de­tec­tion, en­force­ment and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

Among its rec­om­men­da­tions is the rapid ex­pan­sion of the na­tion­al foren­sic DNA data­base, which it said cur­rent­ly holds few­er than 1,500 sam­ples, a fig­ure it de­scribed as in­ad­e­quate for mod­ern crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The Cham­ber al­so pro­posed the in­tro­duc­tion of RFID-en­abled li­cence plate tech­nol­o­gy to as­sist law en­force­ment in track­ing stolen ve­hi­cles and ac­cess­ing re­al-time da­ta.

It called for the cre­ation of an in­de­pen­dent in­ter­nal af­fairs unit, po­ten­tial­ly staffed in part by ex­pe­ri­enced, re­tired for­eign law en­force­ment pro­fes­sion­als, to re­place the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau.

Oth­er mea­sures in­clude the de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al cam­era sur­veil­lance net­work us­ing so­lar-pow­ered sys­tems, with in­te­grat­ed fa­cial recog­ni­tion and li­cence plate read­er tech­nol­o­gy across ur­ban and com­mer­cial ar­eas.

The Cham­ber al­so raised con­cerns about de­lays in the ju­di­cial sys­tem, not­ing that some in­di­vid­u­als re­main on re­mand for 12 to 15 years. It rec­om­mend­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of night courts and traf­fic courts, along with in­creased fund­ing for the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to al­low for the hir­ing of ad­di­tion­al pros­e­cu­tors.

It fur­ther called for im­prove­ments to the Sex­u­al Of­fences Reg­istry, in­clud­ing leg­is­la­tion to en­able di­rect da­ta shar­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies.

The Cham­ber said tar­get­ed an­ti-gang strate­gies are crit­i­cal, warn­ing that de­tain­ing sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers with­out long-term plans for pros­e­cu­tion is not a sus­tain­able so­lu­tion.

It al­so ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, col­leagues and loved ones of po­lice of­fi­cer Anusha Ever­s­ley.