Opposition questions government’s joint police-army security posts

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of us­ing a re­cent­ly an­nounced joint po­lice and mil­i­tary se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tive as a means of rein­tro­duc­ing a pre­vi­ous­ly pro­posed se­cu­ri­ty mod­el, while rais­ing con­cerns about fund­ing, im­ple­men­ta­tion and the role of the mil­i­tary.

In a Face­book post, Beck­les de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment's plan to es­tab­lish joint po­lice and Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force posts as a "knee-jerk re­ac­tion" to grow­ing pub­lic con­cern over crime.

She claimed the ini­tia­tive was an at­tempt to "qui­et­ly rein­tro­duce" the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) con­cept, which had been pro­posed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress dur­ing its pre­vi­ous term in of­fice but was nev­er im­ple­ment­ed.

Beck­les al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment, say­ing it came on­ly days af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed that crime had de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

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

She ar­gued that if crime were un­der con­trol, there would be no need for what she de­scribed as a "hap­haz­ard four-month plan."

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so ques­tioned how the Gov­ern­ment se­lect­ed the lo­ca­tions for the ini­tial se­cu­ri­ty posts.

Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, the Prime Min­is­ter had pre­vi­ous­ly sug­gest­ed that crime was con­cen­trat­ed in Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment com­mu­ni­ties, yet she claimed that about 90 per cent of the pro­posed lo­ca­tions were in ar­eas rep­re­sent­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Beck­les al­so sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the le­gal au­thor­i­ty of De­fence Force per­son­nel as­signed to the ini­tia­tive, ask­ing whether mem­bers of the TTDF would be grant­ed po­lice pow­ers.

She fur­ther ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to in­tro­duce a ZOSO-style se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ment with­out broad­er pub­lic dis­cus­sion.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so raised con­cerns over fi­nanc­ing, not­ing that no fund­ing had been iden­ti­fied for the ini­tia­tive. She ques­tioned how the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to staff and equip the ad­di­tion­al posts, cit­ing what she de­scribed as ex­ist­ing chal­lenges in pro­vid­ing re­sources for sol­diers.

Beck­les con­clud­ed that es­tab­lish­ing 30 new joint se­cu­ri­ty posts would not make up for what she char­ac­terised as the Gov­ern­ment's lack of a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan.