Crime fighting needs helicopters

THE EDITOR: The recent kidnap/murder of young Mr Baksh will lead to all sorts of stupid, asinine, simplistic and inflammatory remarks from the illiterate and the not so illiterate. Our system of crime prevention and crime detection is so primitive not only here but in the Caribbean to the point where a former senior Cabinet Minister in the Barbados government (and a close friend of mine) said to me recently, “M....., I had always been in favour of the death penalty until I started to observe in recent times that the majority of convictions (in Barbados) for murder and other serious crimes resulted from confession from the accused.”

Here in Trinidad we go a bit further — Confessions and evidence by accomplices similarly result in conviction of the accused in very many instances. It has been said very often by more than one international jurist that it is a very sad day when the police and the prosecution have to rely on confessions and accomplices “to win” their cases. It shows of gross and serious deficiency in crime detection.
Why have I raised this in the context of Mr Baksh’s death? I know that modern police and other protective services rely quite a lot on airborne/aircraft services, particularly helicopters. For example: a) A robbery is committed in Canada or the United States or Europe and immediately helicopters are on the scene tracking down and trying to locate the suspects.
b) A person is reported missing and these aircraft are called in to try and track down the person. Trinidad and Tobago is a fraction of the size of Manitoulin Island an island situated in one of the fresh water Canadian lakes. In other words there is not a lot of ground to cover in Trinidad and Tobago especially if we use modern equipment that can be made available to us such as satellite tracking.
c) A serious accident takes place in some part of Trinidad and Tobago and rather than wait for EHS or some private vehicle to take the victim to the nearest Hospital or Health Office, a helicopter is on the scene. It is less likely that if the person is seriously injured he will not arrive at the emergency ward - LDFA- Long dead before arrival.           
d) Bush fires are sighted in the hills and mountains during the dry season, started perhaps by a bunch of animals known as slash and burners. Helicopters are dispatched to the scene not only to locate the fire, but to photograph and identify the culprits. Of course, the fire fighting “whatever its name” buckets that  were donated by the Canadian government a long time ago and rusted away at Chaguaramas, will have to be replaced.
e) Suspicious coastal activity by foreign and local boats could be monitored day and night to prevent piracy, gun running etc.
f) Regular helicopter surveillance flights will pinpoint “suspicious” areas such as “car stripping” fields and areas used to plant prohibited drugs. Under regular surveillance both by day and at night (with night surveillance equipment) one could observe a serious drop in many criminal activities. The problem is that helicopters are expensive and life is cheap so can we afford a fleet of 12-15 helicopters for all the above services?
The other major problem is how do we acquire a fleet of helicopters to meet our needs? If we were to purchase those helicopters are we going to put it in the hands of our protective services? 
When one looks at the sorry state of the vehicles and equipment currently in the hands of those services one shudders to think about the shelf life of those aircraft. Regular maintenance of buildings, vehicles, equipment and other assets owned by governments are anathema.

Finally, this type of technology I am about to suggest is light years ahead of us but those of you who have travelled to metropolitan countries have you noticed the surveillance system in place in large areas of so many of the city centres. The technology is not there as part of a “big brother” spy system but to monitor such things as fires, natural disasters, serious traffic congestion and other problems that can so easily grow out of control in the metropolitan areas.

In metropolitan areas like Port-of-Spain, San Fernando, Chaguanas there are also so many things that can grow out of control but could be remedied by a surveillance system. The problem is that with our ever backward approach to governance and our irresponsible attitude of letting things get out of hand before we attempt to act precludes us from introducing that sort of technology.
What a pity!

M HOTIN
St James