Government frustrated at crime

Even as a Manpower Audit aims to untangle the “tangled system” of the TT Police Service, he said that under the law he cannot direct the police how to act. “I too am angered by some of the things I see,” Rowley said. He added it is a long way for crime to reach to an acceptable situation but Government is on the job.

Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon, hoped the use of DNA would help boost the country’s paltry 18 percent detection rate for murders. He expressed frustration at bandits being on bail and bemoaned that when police hold a bandit with a gun he/she quickly gets bail from a magistrate and gets another gun to go out to commit more crimes, to get money to pay his attorneys to keep him out of jail.

He said a message must be sent to those persons bent on destroying TT. While the largest section of the incarcerated consists of persons of remand — suspects who are yet untried — he hopes to free up the prison population by use of electronic tagging whereby inmates would be restricted to certain locations outside jail.

Rowley urged zero tolerance for police misconduct, saying the public must trust the police to give them information on criminality. Saying Acting Police Commissioner, Stephen Williams has been told to weed out bad officers, Rowley if citizens are afraid of the police the war on crime will be lost.

Attorney General (AG) Faris Al-Rawi later said this is the 17th year of the Preliminary Inquiry into the Piarco Airport scandal, as he expressed frustration at how the PI goes from High Court to Appeal Court to Privy Council, then a judicial review of the PI can follow the same tack, after which the case itself once underway could also follow the same three tiers.

Crime also featured heavily in the question session. Asked about the Citizen Security Programme, Dillon said it is under evaluation, but was not thrown out. A man asked how quickly could death row inmates be hanged, to which Rowley replied that the death penalty is not in the hands of Government alone because certain other structures are in place. He said if only ten percent of murderers are ever apprehended, any focus on the death penalty will not affect the majority 90 percent.

Al-Rawi said that of the 33 persons on death row, 11 are ineligible to be hanged as their appeals exceed the five year limit set by the Privy Council in the Pratt and Morgan judgement.