Experts agree murder at police station disturbing

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah has de­scribed the re­port­ed breach at the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion, which re­sult­ed in the death of a po­lice of­fi­cer and the theft of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion from the sta­tion’s vault, as a “deeply dis­turb­ing and high­ly sen­si­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dent.”

Heer­ah, who is the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC), called for the mat­ter to be treat­ed with the “ut­most in­ves­tiga­tive cau­tion, as pre­ma­ture con­clu­sions could com­pro­mise crit­i­cal lines of in­quiry.”

Ad­dress­ing the in­ci­dent, Heer­ah said it had raised “se­ri­ous con­cerns re­gard­ing the in­tegri­ty and re­silience of lay­ered se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems at law en­force­ment fa­cil­i­ties.”

“Po­lice sta­tions and mu­nic­i­pal bases are in­tend­ed to be hard­ened en­vi­ron­ments, se­cured not on­ly phys­i­cal­ly, but pro­ce­du­ral­ly and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly. A breach of this mag­ni­tude sig­nals po­ten­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that must be ur­gent­ly as­sessed and ad­dressed across all sim­i­lar in­stal­la­tions na­tion­wide,” Heer­ah said.

He added, “Equal­ly trou­bling is the clear in­di­ca­tion of the evolv­ing bold­ness and ca­pa­bil­i­ty of or­gan­ised crime groups. Crim­i­nal net­works are no longer op­er­at­ing on the pe­riph­ery but are demon­strat­ing a will­ing­ness to di­rect­ly tar­get state se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture, elim­i­nate of­fi­cers of the law and seize weapons to strength­en their op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty.”

He in­sist­ed, “The killing of a po­lice of­fi­cer in such a con­text is not on­ly an at­tack on an in­di­vid­ual, but an as­sault on the au­thor­i­ty of the State.”

Cit­ing the theft of firearms and ac­com­pa­ny­ing am­mu­ni­tion, he said this con­sti­tut­ed a sig­nif­i­cant threat to pub­lic safe­ty.

“These weapons, now po­ten­tial­ly in the hands of crim­i­nal el­e­ments, rep­re­sent an im­me­di­ate and el­e­vat­ed risk of vi­o­lent crime, in­clud­ing reprisal at­tacks, gang es­ca­la­tion, and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions,” he said.

This, Heer­ah said, re­quired ur­gent ac­tion by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his lead­er­ship team. He said co­or­di­nat­ed ef­forts among in­tel­li­gence units, in­ves­tiga­tive di­vi­sions, foren­sic ser­vices and spe­cialised tac­ti­cal teams, as well as a high-lev­el tech­no­log­i­cal ap­proach lever­ag­ing sur­veil­lance an­a­lyt­ics, dig­i­tal foren­sics, com­mu­ni­ca­tions track­ing and da­ta in­te­gra­tion, would be es­sen­tial in re­con­struct­ing the in­ci­dent, iden­ti­fy­ing per­pe­tra­tors and re­cov­er­ing the stolen weapons.

To those in au­thor­i­ty, Heer­ah urged, “This in­ci­dent must al­so serve as a na­tion­al wake-up call. There is an ur­gent need to el­e­vate se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols across all law en­force­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­stal­la­tions.

“Im­me­di­ate re­views of ac­cess con­trol sys­tems, ar­moury man­age­ment pro­ce­dures, per­son­nel vet­ting, sur­veil­lance cov­er­age and rapid re­sponse mech­a­nisms must be un­der­tak­en as pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures.”

He said the safe­ty of of­fi­cers, se­cu­ri­ty of state as­sets and the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic de­pend on a de­ci­sive, co­or­di­nat­ed and in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven re­sponse.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad ap­pealed to the pub­lic to al­low in­ves­ti­ga­tors to con­duct en­quiries be­fore jump­ing to con­clu­sions which could lead to un­due pan­ic. He al­so said he did not be­lieve the in­ci­dent war­rant­ed res­ig­na­tions from the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter or the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

In a re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Seep­er­sad, who is the head of the Crim­i­nol­o­gy De­part­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said it was im­pos­si­ble for the two men to be every­where all of the time.

“If any­thing, this in­ci­dent shows up some weak­ness­es in the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems,” he said.

Re­fer­ring to the sit­u­a­tion as “un­prece­dent­ed,” Seep­er­sad said a lot of plan­ning would have had to go in­to pulling off such an op­er­a­tion and which re­sult­ed in the death of an of­fi­cer.

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the po­lice, he urged them to be trans­par­ent with the pub­lic and to pro­vide up­dates as promised.

Seep­er­sad said such in­ci­dents re­flect­ed the vi­o­lent, brazen na­ture of crim­i­nals who were will­ing to stage at­tacks re­gard­less of who was near­by.