An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Per­form­ing the an­nu­al Car­ni­val walk­a­bout in the cap­i­tal city for the last time as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day, Fitzger­ald Hinds said the last rodeo had left him hap­py and proud.

Speak­ing with re­porters as the se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­gent crossed the down­town judg­ing point at South Quay, Port-of-Spain, just be­fore 9 am, Hinds said the walk clear­ly demon­strat­ed “the law en­force­ment plat­form is unit­ed.”

De­clar­ing, “it is strong and al­most om­nipresent,” he said this had been echoed by both lo­cals and vis­i­tors through­out the fes­tiv­i­ties.

Re­gard­ing the ef­forts by thou­sands of law en­force­ment per­son­nel who pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion across both is­lands dur­ing Car­ni­val 2025, Hinds said, “We are quite proud and pleased, rep­re­sent­ing T&T, to have put in place a se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus that makes them, as they are at­test­ing to, feel very, very com­fort­able.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing there is crime every­where, he cred­it­ed the col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach by all arms of law en­force­ment as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the suc­cess.

This in­clud­ed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS); the T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS); the Prison Ser­vice; the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion; the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion; the Coast Guard; and the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF).

Ac­knowl­edg­ing yes­ter­day was his last stint as a po­lit­i­cal fig­ure­head con­duct­ing such an ex­er­cise, Hinds said it was still a mov­ing goal­post.

“The busi­ness of crime, crim­i­nal­i­ty and law­less­ness are very hu­man con­di­tions and once hu­man be­ings are in­volved, all things are pos­si­ble,” Hinds said.

He de­scribed the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) as a well-de­signed and craft­ed ac­tiv­i­ty de­signed to af­fect the crim­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty.

He praised all in­volved as he said, “I am par­tic­u­lar­ly proud that we seem to have struck, we have seemed to have found a very won­der­ful, well-oiled for­mu­la.”

He said the pub­lic feed­back was pos­i­tive tes­ta­ment that se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives were work­ing, not­ing many crim­i­nals had fled T&T, “to get out of the view of Mr Ben­jamin and his teams.”

Asked if he would be rec­om­mend­ing an ex­ten­sion of the SoE, Hinds ex­plained that its im­ple­men­ta­tion could on­ly be ef­fect­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net.

“I am not the Cab­i­net,” he stat­ed.

On the per­for­mance of act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who cel­e­brates one month in the post to­day, Hinds said, “I am not the one to as­sess the per­for­mance of the Com­mis­sion­er per se. It is a mat­ter for the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, you have to un­der­stand that. But as for me as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, I have found a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al, very se­ri­ous and very fo­cused on his work and that is as much as we can ask.”

He said Ben­jamin had up­held and em­bod­ied the laws of T&T as set out in the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“I am quite hap­py with what I have seen in this re­gard to date,” Hinds said.

He too not­ed the in­creased po­lice pres­ence gen­er­al­ly, which he ad­mit­ted had not come about by hap­pen­stance but due to strate­gies, tech­niques and the ef­forts of Ben­jamin and his ex­ec­u­tive.

Act­ing CoP: Record num­ber of of­fi­cers out this year

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says a record num­ber of of­fi­cers were out for Car­ni­val 2025 and they were able to ex­e­cute their plans.

“We are grate­ful there have been no un­to­ward in­ci­dents ex­cept for that sit­u­a­tion we are in­ves­ti­gat­ing,” Be­na­jmin said yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The in­ci­dent he was re­fer­ring to at the time was the death of Sel­wyn Lit­tle, who was crushed to death by a mu­sic truck in San Fer­nan­do on Mon­day.

Hours lat­er, how­ev­er, the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Port-of-Spain were marred by a shoot­ing in­ci­dent in St James which claimed one life and in­jured three oth­ers.

Ad­mit­ting they had record­ed mi­nor in­ci­dents dur­ing the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions up to yes­ter­day morn­ing, Ben­jamin as­sured, “All in all, we can say that right now, per­sons are feel­ing free. We have a high vis­i­bil­i­ty of in­di­vid­u­als and po­lice of­fi­cers out.”

He added, “We have more of­fi­cers out, prob­a­bly more than we ever had in the last cou­ple years, so it means that our strate­gies are work­ing. We have per­sons at all the choke points so per­sons can feel safe.”

He es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 70 and 80 per cent of of­fi­cers had re­port­ed for du­ty dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

With a 33 per cent de­cline in homi­cides and 30 few­er mur­ders since the year be­gan, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, Ben­jamin said of­fi­cers were busy work­ing to re­solve as many cas­es as pos­si­ble and as­sured they “will con­tin­ue to push.”

He said they were still not sat­is­fied with the mur­der toll but was con­fi­dent the SoE would help them to push things in a “pos­i­tive di­rec­tion.”