Alexander hits critics; says radar comments taken out of context

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is coun­ter­ing ac­cu­sa­tions that he over­stat­ed the role of To­ba­go’s new radar sys­tem, say­ing his re­marks were tak­en out of con­text by “so-called ex­perts.”

On Tues­day, when asked whether the radar could help lo­cate cou­ple Der­rick and Clari­bel Tardieu, who were kid­napped from their Monos Is­land home on Sat­ur­day, Alexan­der said, “Def­i­nite­ly! That’s why the ru­mours are spread­ing and that is why we had very lit­tle to say at the time. Ru­mours were just spread­ing... What we con­tin­ue to see? Not the same thing hap­pen­ing every day? Boats com­ing in, we don’t know. And all of these things. This is what we are try­ing to strate­gi­cal­ly or­gan­ise. Tech­nol­o­gy at its best in or­der to pre­vent these things from hap­pen­ing.”

Gary Grif­fith, a for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er, called the claim “ir­re­spon­si­ble” and in­di­cat­ed that tech­nol­o­gy was al­ready avail­able but were not be­ing used.

Mean­while Nor­man Din­di­al, for­mer di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Coastal Sur­veil­lance Radar Cen­tre and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader, said the sys­tem is a bat­tle­field-ready air-sur­veil­lance plat­form built for US strate­gic op­er­a­tions and of­fers no prac­ti­cal ben­e­fit to Trinidad and To­ba­go in a kid­nap­ping re­sponse.

But speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Alexan­der in­sist­ed he nev­er sug­gest­ed po­lice were us­ing the radar to find the vic­tims. He said he sim­ply not­ed that if equip­ment used in a crime were de­tectable by radar, it could as­sist.

“I of­ten al­low the don­keys to bray. The ques­tion was asked if the radar in To­ba­go will help to solve the case, and I said ‘def­i­nite­ly’, mean­ing if equip­ment was used in the of­fence, that the radar can or would be able to iden­ti­fy, then so be it. But I un­der­stand the so-called ex­perts need to stay rel­e­vant at all times and make their po­lit­i­cal base give them a round of ap­plause for talk­ing be­cause they are the ‘se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts’ in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He al­so dis­missed his crit­ics as fig­ures who built rep­u­ta­tions with­out re­al com­bat ex­pe­ri­ence and left be­hind in­sti­tu­tion­al prob­lems for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

“Some of them are such ex­perts who nev­er was in a war, who nev­er was in a gun bat­tle, but read a book about war and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and they are the best. Some of them did such a good job that right now, as we speak, the po­lice ser­vice con­tin­ues to suf­fer from the many ‘ex­pert de­ci­sions’ that they made dur­ing their tenure,” Alexan­der said.

“Le­gal mat­ters pend­ing, un­paid debts, pro­mo­tion prob­lems that will af­fect the ser­vice for the next two years or more, con­tracts that had lit­tle or no ben­e­fit for the TTPS, the pur­chas­ing of out­dat­ed equip­ment and that’s just to name a few.”

Alexan­der said both ex­perts and re­porters had failed to con­sid­er the con­text of his ini­tial re­marks.

“The ex­perts and the re­porter must un­der­stand the con­text… be­cause at no time did I say that the TTPS was us­ing the radar to find the vic­tims.”