Mobile security posts spark debate over planning laws

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

The con­tro­ver­sy over Gov­ern­ment’s mo­bile po­lice-army posts has widened in­to a de­bate over whether the dri­ve to im­prove pub­lic safe­ty is be­ing car­ried out with­in ex­ist­ing plan­ning, pro­cure­ment and mu­nic­i­pal laws.

For­mer St Au­gus­tine MP and at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har says the fo­cus should re­main on pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens, while at­tor­ney Saira Lakhan and for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte say the crime-fight­ing ob­jec­tive does not re­move ques­tions about what le­gal ap­provals may be re­quired.

The de­bate fol­lows the con­fronta­tion over the pro­posed mo­bile post at the Ed­die Hart Grounds, where the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion said it was not con­sult­ed be­fore works be­gan.

Ra­mad­har, who rep­re­sent­ed St Au­gus­tine for ten years, said po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant at Ed­die Hart.

“With spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to Ed­die Hart Grounds, let me tell you now, for those who do not know, on an av­er­age evening, there are hun­dreds of per­sons tak­ing their walks, ex­er­cise, sports,” he said.

Ra­mad­har said peo­ple need­ed to know where they could find po­lice when they were in trou­ble and ar­gued that a vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence could pro­vide a sense of se­cu­ri­ty.

On the dis­pute be­tween Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the cor­po­ra­tion, he warned against al­low­ing ques­tions over au­thor­i­ty to stall mea­sures in­tend­ed to pro­tect cit­i­zens.

“If we go to the po­si­tion that I, on my side, have this au­thor­i­ty, but do not un­der­stand the big­ger pic­ture that is re­quired to fix Trinidad and To­ba­go, then we end up in a state of paral­y­sis,” Ra­mad­har said.

He added, “This is not a le­gal is­sue as much as it is one of con­science, one of what is prop­er, what is of com­mon-sense val­ue and for the in­cred­i­ble ben­e­fit of all of our cit­i­zens.”

Lakhan, how­ev­er, said the le­gal po­si­tion de­pend­ed on what was ac­tu­al­ly be­ing placed or con­struct­ed.

“From a le­gal stand­point, I am not aware of any gen­er­al re­quire­ment that Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment must ob­tain the con­sent of, or for­mal­ly con­sult with, a re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion sim­ply be­cause it pro­pos­es to de­ploy a mo­bile po­lice unit with­in that cor­po­ra­tion’s ge­o­graph­i­cal bound­aries,” she said.

But Lakhan said that was sep­a­rate from whether the project trig­gered plan­ning, land-use or oth­er statu­to­ry ap­provals.

“In many cas­es, a gen­uine­ly mo­bile unit may not amount to ‘de­vel­op­ment’ in the tra­di­tion­al sense and there­fore may not re­quire plan­ning per­mis­sion, but that would de­pend on the facts,” she said.

Lakhan said rel­e­vant fac­tors could in­clude whether the unit was per­ma­nent­ly sta­tioned, whether fixed in­fra­struc­ture or util­i­ties were in­volved, and the du­ra­tion and in­ten­si­ty of its use.

She al­so said Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing ob­jec­tive was rel­e­vant when con­sid­er­ing the use of pub­lic spaces for se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.

Le Hunte, mean­while, said he ful­ly sup­ports more po­lice posts but in­sist­ed that sup­port for the ini­tia­tive should not pre­vent scruti­ny of how it is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

“I sup­port more polic­ing. I sup­port more po­lice posts. I sup­port every law­ful ini­tia­tive that will make our com­mu­ni­ties safer,” he said.

But he added, “The is­sue is not the ob­jec­tive. The is­sue is the method. In a democ­ra­cy, even the most wor­thy ob­jec­tive must be pur­sued law­ful­ly.”

Le Hunte said Par­lia­ment had es­tab­lished pro­cure­ment, plan­ning and mu­nic­i­pal laws and Gov­ern­ment should al­so be ac­count­able to those re­quire­ments.

“The ques­tion is whether Gov­ern­ment be­lieves it is ex­empt from the very laws that every oth­er cit­i­zen is ex­pect­ed to obey.”

He al­so re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that rais­ing ques­tions about ap­provals meant op­pos­ing the crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive.

“Sup­port­ing the rule of law and sup­port­ing stronger polic­ing are not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive. They should go hand in hand,” Le Hunte said.