Kamla, Beckles clash over joint police-army posts

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les are clash­ing over the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish 30 joint po­lice and army posts across the coun­try.

Beck­les is ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty, fund­ing and ef­fec­tive­ness of the ini­tia­tive, while Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of stand­ing in the way of ef­forts to dis­man­tle the drug trade.

The Gov­ern­ment in­tends to es­tab­lish the joint Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) posts over the next four months as part of its crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, the Op­po­si­tion Leader de­scribed the plan as a “knee-jerk re­ac­tion” to mount­ing pub­lic con­cern over crime.

She al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to use the ini­tia­tive to qui­et­ly re­vive its pre­vi­ous­ly pro­posed Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) mod­el.

Beck­les said the an­nounce­ment came just days af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed crime had de­clined con­sid­er­ably, ar­gu­ing that the es­tab­lish­ment of the posts ap­peared in­con­sis­tent with the Prime Min­is­ter’s as­sess­ment of the crime sit­u­a­tion.

“It comes just days af­ter her false boast that crime was down con­sid­er­ably, while home in­va­sions and mur­ders con­tin­ue across the coun­try,” Beck­les said.

“If crime were un­der con­trol, there would be no need for this hap­haz­ard four-month plan.”

Beck­les al­so ques­tioned the cri­te­ria used to se­lect the lo­ca­tions for the se­cu­ri­ty posts.

She said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had re­peat­ed­ly sought to as­so­ciate crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty with PNM con­stituen­cies but claimed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 per cent of the pro­posed lo­ca­tions for the joint posts were in ar­eas rep­re­sent­ed by the UNC.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so raised ques­tions about the pre­cise role De­fence Force per­son­nel would play and whether sol­diers as­signed to the posts would be grant­ed po­lice pow­ers.

Fund­ing and re­sources were an­oth­er area of con­cern for Beck­les, who said no al­lo­ca­tion had been iden­ti­fied for the ini­tia­tive.

She ques­tioned how the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to es­tab­lish, staff and equip 30 ad­di­tion­al posts while en­sur­ing that po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers had the nec­es­sary re­sources to op­er­ate ef­fec­tive­ly.

She said the es­tab­lish­ment of the posts could not sub­sti­tute for what she de­scribed as the ab­sence of a com­pre­hen­sive Gov­ern­ment strat­e­gy to tack­le crime.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, re­spond­ed and ac­cused the PNM of be­ing more con­cerned about the es­tab­lish­ment of the se­cu­ri­ty posts than what she de­scribed as “drug blocks” op­er­at­ing across the coun­try.

“To my ad­mir­ers in the PNM, why com­plain about the 30 new joint army/po­lice posts across the coun­try when you should be com­plain­ing about the drug blocks that your lo­cal drug mafia friends are run­ning across the coun­try, poi­son­ing our chil­dren?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She claimed PNM strong­hold con­stituen­cies have some of the coun­try’s high­est mur­der rates and con­cen­tra­tions of vi­o­lent gangs, while al­so suf­fer­ing from high un­em­ploy­ment, poor in­fra­struc­ture and lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties.

De­spite those chal­lenges, she al­leged that the Op­po­si­tion and peo­ple she de­scribed as “spokesper­sons for the lo­cal drug mafia” were re­sist­ing a greater se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence in those com­mu­ni­ties.

“They are against the joint army/po­lice posts, against Amer­i­can se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance, they spread ha­tred against the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, and they do and say every­thing to al­low the lo­cal drug mafia to de­stroy PNM strong­holds with il­le­gal drugs and vi­o­lence,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter went fur­ther, ac­cus­ing the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of fail­ing to pro­tect cit­i­zens dur­ing its decade in of­fice.

She claimed 5,000 peo­ple were mur­dered and 8,000 raped dur­ing the PNM’s tenure and ac­cused the par­ty of pri­ori­tis­ing the in­ter­ests of wealthy peo­ple she de­scribed as “drug-traf­fick­ing fi­nanciers.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence in her state­ment to sub­stan­ti­ate her al­le­ga­tions of links be­tween the PNM and drug traf­fick­ers.

She al­so ac­cused PNM MPs and sup­port­ers of al­low­ing po­lit­i­cal and racial di­vi­sions to in­flu­ence their re­sponse to the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing mea­sures.

Us­ing a racial slur tra­di­tion­al­ly di­rect­ed at peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent to re­fer to her­self, Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed some Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers would rather see their com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to suf­fer than co­op­er­ate with her ad­min­is­tra­tion and the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

“Sad­ly, PNM MPs and sup­port­ers are so full of ha­tred and racism that they would pre­fer their strong­hold con­stituen­cies and their chil­dren’s fu­ture to con­tin­ue to be de­stroyed by the lo­cal drug mafia rather than co­op­er­ate with the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and the ‘c*****’ Prime Min­is­ter to bring safe­ty to their own con­stituen­cies,” she said.

The Gov­ern­ment main­tains that the 30 joint po­lice-army posts are in­tend­ed to strength­en the pres­ence of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices in com­mu­ni­ties as part of its wider strat­e­gy to tack­le se­ri­ous crime.