FOR THE WRONG REASON

While any decision to turn in illegally held guns and ammunition is welcome, nonetheless the reason reportedly advanced to members of the Anti- Kidnapping Squad (AKS) that this week’s provision of jobs to residents of Belle Vue, St James under the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) had been the inducement to do this, makes uncomfortable reading. Any reporting of illegal activity by citizens of Trinidad and Tobago should be regarded as their civic duty. And although we welcome the whittling down of the number of guns and ammunition now in the possession of criminals as not only welcome but needed, yet the allocation of URP jobs should never be conceived as a bribe.

Yet this is clearly the message reportedly conveyed on Wednesday to the Anti-Kidnapping Squad by some of those who benefitted from the URP project at Belle Vue. Yesterday’s (Thursday) Newsday quotes a senior AKS officer, Inspector Adam Joseph, as stating: “We want to personally commend the residents of the area who have decided to work with the Police following the provision of jobs via the URP and the other initiatives planned by the Government for the youths of the area.” Later Joseph would say: “They (the residents) also claim that they now intend to work with the Police and other law enforcement agencies. It is along this background that this information (on the illegally held guns and ammunition) was passed on to us.”

There are fairly established procedures in which meaningful information given can be rewarded, for example the Crime Stoppers programme. In turn, there are fairly well known systems in place in the Police Service itself, providing for payment for information, given under cloak of confidentiality, which leads or has led to the solving of crimes and/or to the effective dealing of situations which pose a menace to the community. But for any individual or set of individuals to adopt the position that the offering of information to the Police could or would be done solely in exchange for employment in the Unemployment Relief Programme is to subvert the programme which has been designed to provide jobs of a clearly stated temporary nature to persons, who have not been able to otherwise secure work. We wish to make it clear that we salute the decision of the youths who provided the Anti-Kidnapping Squad with the critically needed information leading to the discovery and seizure of guns and ammunition by the Police. Nonetheless, are we comfortable with the way it was done?