Valley puts Hinds on the spot

TRADE and Industry Minister Ken Valley yesterday put Junior National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds on the spot about Government’s efforts to deal with crime in Trinidad and Tobago. During a breakfast meeting at the fifth Euromoney/Latin Finance Caribbean Investment Forum at the Hilton Trinidad yesterday, an American businessman asked Valley about the crime situation in TT. While giving his own take on Government’s anti-crime efforts, Valley then turned to Hinds, who was seated in the audience, to give a more detailed response. Hinds assured the gathering that Government was “exerting its best efforts to battle crime.”

Speaking afterwards with reporters, Hinds said there was law and order in TT for the most part, but “if there was more social pressure and better family management and better parenting, there would be less need for the police.” He explained that fighting crime is not purely about law enforcement, and asking what Government was doing to fight crime was  “an unthinking question.” “We are running a rear guard action, trying to treat with some social degradation that took place over many years and many elements of that social degradation has to do with matters for which the Government has no direct control. There are many fathers in this country who, rather than spend money on books, will spend it in the rum shop or the gambling shop. There are many mothers in this country, when they should be staying home nurturing their babies, they want to go and wine and fete and roam,” he declared.

Hinds said Government has launched initiatives through all of its ministries to create social stability at the level of the family and the community, because this will contribute to a more secure nation. The minister said crime is not perturbing new investors from setting up shop in TT and this will also help Government’s anti-crime efforts, particularly in the areas of employment and revenue to improve the social sector. “Everyone is getting on deck dealing with the matter. Dealing with crime is not only about national security. Dealing with crime has to do with the totality of the human being,” he declared.

Hinds said law enforcement agencies are scoring important victories against the criminals, and noted the reduction of serious crimes in major urban centres in TT due to operations by the Inter-Agency Task Force. He added that “different types of crime require different police tactics” and those tactics were being deployed. Hinds said the Special Anti-Crime Unit and hiring of US Professor Stephen Mastrofski’s team to improve management within the police service were two of the best investments made by Government in its war against crime. He added that Government will continue to strengthen the police administratively and remains hopeful of a legislative solution in the near future. The minister said he will respond to Pointe-a-Pierre MP Gillian Lucky’s motion on the adjournment on kidnappings in TT at next Friday’s sitting of the House of Representatives. Hinds also dismissed allegations that only persons of a particular ethnicity were being kidnapped.