Alexander: Govt not ruling out death penalty

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says the gov­ern­ment is keep­ing all op­tions on the ta­ble in its fight against crime, not­ing that a pos­si­ble re­turn of the death penal­ty can­not be ruled out.

Speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing the Chil­dren’s Car­ni­val Pa­rade and Treat along East­ern Main Road, Tu­na­puna, on Sun­day af­ter­noon, Alexan­der ad­dressed calls from Pamela Clarke, moth­er of mur­der vic­tim Amelia Her­nan­dez, for the gov­ern­ment to en­force the death penal­ty.

Her­nan­dez, 34, and her for­mer boyfriend De­vaughn Tou­s­saint, 38, were gunned down at the Jade Court Play­park in Cou­va in front of their three-year-old daugh­ter and oth­er chil­dren. Footage of the in­ci­dent cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly on so­cial me­dia, spark­ing pub­lic out­rage.

Alexan­der said the gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to tak­ing law­ful, de­ci­sive ac­tion against vi­o­lent crime.

“I have sup­port­ed it. It is still in the books. I think some­one needs to jump out of them­selves and let’s get it done,” he said.

When asked whether the death penal­ty could be re­in­stat­ed un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, Alexan­der con­firmed it was a pos­si­bil­i­ty.

“Don’t un­der­es­ti­mate us. We are not what peo­ple think we are. We in­tend to take this to the lim­it. If do­ing that gen­er­ates the kind of en­er­gy we need from the pop­u­la­tion to tack­le crime, to as­sist, then we will do just that,” he said.

He added that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was deeply dis­turbed by the mur­ders, de­scrib­ing them as “un­ac­cept­able and un­god­ly.” Alexan­der urged the sus­pects in the dou­ble homi­cide to sur­ren­der to po­lice or face po­ten­tial­ly fa­tal con­se­quences.

Re­spond­ing to com­ments by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing its low­est crime lev­els in over 15 years, Alexan­der said he re­mains un­sat­is­fied with homi­cide de­tec­tion rates.

“I am nev­er sat­is­fied. I stay hun­gry for knowl­edge and hun­gry enough to pro­tect my peo­ple by any law­ful means nec­es­sary. At no stage is this fight over un­til every sin­gle cit­i­zen of T&T feels safe,” he said.

Alexan­der al­so stressed that the gov­ern­ment has no in­ten­tion of en­gag­ing in po­lit­i­cal “tit-for-tat” with the Op­po­si­tion, but re­it­er­at­ed that sup­port from all law­mak­ers would be ap­pre­ci­at­ed to pass leg­is­la­tion aimed at se­cur­ing the na­tion.