Panday asks about Police-Army Unit

OPPOSITION LEADER Basdeo Panday wants to know what has become of a “special response unit” which was being formed to combat crime. Referring to Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s announcement in June about Government’s intention to establish “a special response unit of 400 officers from the army and police to fight crime”, Panday claimed yesterday that unit “has not materialised” and wondered whether the deployment of 1,000 police officers to the nation’s streets was a new plan. In a subsequent statement, the United National Congress (UNC) claimed Government’s new anti-crime initiative was nothing but “a last ditch attempt” to save National Security Minister Howard Chin Lee’s job. “In what was obviously a last ditch attempt to save his job, Senator Chin Lee presented a wishy-washy crime plan that sounded no different from previous plans, all of which have failed,” the UNC stated. The UNC said Chin Lee gave no indication where the 1,000 police officers would come from or what means of transportation would be provided for them to do their job. “In what is obviously an about turn of policy, the nation was told that 1,000 new officers would be placed on the job. This once more demonstrates the PNM’s infinite capacity to govern by vaps. Over a short period of two months, the PNM has come up with two totally different crime plans with differing strategies,” the Opposition declared.

The UNC said Chin Lee’s “new crime plan”did not mention “the need to give the police the requisite training and technology that are necessary to combat crime”. Addressing Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference, Manning said whatever financial resources were required to fight crime would be made available, there was no ad hoc arrangement in sourcing the 1,000 police officers and Government was dealing with both the enforcement and social aspects of crime. The UNC reiterated that the central issue to crime in Trinidad and Tobago was the “symbiotic association” between the PNM and criminals. The party called on the business community to call on the PNM to “dissociate itself from known criminals, so-called ‘community leaders’ and terrorists”.