Anti-Crime Unit to target gun-runners

NATIONAL SECURITY Minister Martin Joseph disclosed that the Special Anti-Crime Unit will be guiding the security forces’ surgical strikes against the purveyors of illegal guns and ammunition into Trinidad and Tobago. Addressing yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall, the Minister said intelligence  was key to winning this war and he was more than certain that Brigadier Peter Joseph’s group was up to the task. The Unit was formed in January to coordinate intelligence gathering activities within the national security apparatus on crimes such as murder, arms smuggling, drug trafficking, kidnapping and terrorism. “We have the technology now available to us that we will be able to go after some of the illegal guns in a way that we were not able to do before. “It is prudent in areas of national security that you don’t say exactly what it is that you are going to be doing.

“It is going to be done clinically. It is going to be done in a way that at the end of the day, the important thing will be the results. We really want to get the illegal guns off our streets,” Joseph declared. Stressing that increased border surveillance was critical to stemming the flow of guns and drugs into TT, Joseph recalled that the Coast Guard base at Cedros was recently upgraded after the murders of two fishermen by pirates, and there was now an increased security presence in that area. He then announced that Cabinet approved the award of $116,160,000 in contracts to Nipdec to undertake construction upgrade works at the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay headquarters, the Air Wing at Piarco and the Coast Guard’s base in Tobago.

Joseph could not say whether those works involved additional berthing facilities for the two offshore patrol vessels which Government hopes to add to the Coast Guard’s existing fleet. Joseph announced the purchase of $6,125,000 worth of equipment for the TT Fire Services. This includes five water tenders, three aerial appliances, one turntable ladder, five water tankers and one airport fire unit. Joseph also disclosed that Cabinet has approved the purchase of 25 motorcycles for the Police Service at a cost of $3.15 million.