Joint army-police posts being launched this week, says Alexander

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior re­porter

[email protected]

Some of the joint army and po­lice se­cu­ri­ty posts are ex­pect­ed to be of­fi­cial­ly launched this week, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says.

How­ev­er, re­fused to say whether the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and De­fence Force could get ad­di­tion­al sup­port from US se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel as part of the ini­tia­tive.

Alexan­der made the dis­clo­sure fol­low­ing the rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny for Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny at Point Lisas.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment re­mains on track to com­plete the roll-out of the posts with­in the four-month time­frame pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced, Alexan­der said some units are ready to be op­er­a­tionalised.

“Some of the units, we will open them pos­si­bly this week,” he said, adding that Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue work­ing with­in the es­tab­lished time­frame.

Alexan­der main­tained that the posts are a pub­lic safe­ty mech­a­nism and dis­missed crit­i­cism sur­round­ing their con­struc­tion.

“There are no is­sues oth­er than the one that is cre­at­ed by those who are against pub­lic safe­ty,” he said.

But when asked di­rect­ly whether US se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel could join lo­cal of­fi­cers at the posts, Alexan­der de­clined to pro­vide a de­fin­i­tive an­swer, in­stead sug­gest­ing the pub­lic may have to wait and see.

“Some things you have to leave as a sur­prise. You know it’s about hav­ing the added ad­van­tage, so I will leave that for the mind to think,” he said.

The com­ments come amid grow­ing scruti­ny over the Gov­ern­ment’s part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed States on se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters and the ex­tent to which for­eign per­son­nel could aug­ment lo­cal law en­force­ment ef­forts.

Alexan­der al­so of­fered some de­tails about the con­struc­tion of the posts, say­ing their fram­ing is de­signed to make them dif­fi­cult to tar­get.

“It is very dif­fi­cult to pen­e­trate,” he said, stress­ing that the in­fra­struc­ture is in­tend­ed to pro­tect not on­ly cit­i­zens but al­so the po­lice and mil­i­tary per­son­nel who will man the fa­cil­i­ties.

How­ev­er, he once again de­clined to say how much each struc­ture is cost­ing tax­pay­ers, not­ing the fig­ures would be dis­closed at a lat­er stage.

The lack of dis­clo­sure has been a re­cur­ring is­sue as Gov­ern­ment moves ahead with the roll­out, with ques­tions al­so be­ing raised about ap­provals and the pro­cure­ment process.

Alexan­der, how­ev­er, ap­peared un­fazed by the crit­i­cism, ar­gu­ing that op­po­si­tion to the posts was large­ly dri­ven by po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.

“You re­mem­ber right, when one man nev­er thought of some­thing, and it is new to his mind, then he has to find every­thing to crit­i­cise it for, but not see the ben­e­fit of it, be­cause he did not come up with it, it was not his idea,” he said.

He al­so ques­tioned whether some elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives were ad­e­quate­ly con­sult­ing with con­stituents be­fore crit­i­cis­ing the ini­tia­tive.

Alexan­der in­sist­ed the Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue “go­ing full speed ahead,” say­ing the ob­jec­tive was to turn Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s vi­sion in­to ac­tion and im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.