In the midst of a spiralling crime rate, National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds says developing a crime plan is not his responsibility.
Speaking to reporters at the opening of a repatriation office in San Fernando yesterday, Hinds made the comment after being asked to share his crime plan and his views on the reimplementation of the death penalty, the establishment of a gun amnesty and imposing a state of emergency.
According to him, the responsibility of creating a crime plan lies with Commissioner of Police Erla Christopher-Harewood and the Defence Force, which offers support to the T&T Police Service in its crime eradication drive.
Hinds said: “You have asked some troubling and difficult questions. A minister of Government does not generate or create a crime plan. That is a matter for the Police Commissioner, the Defence Force that supports the police.”
He added: “I have always said I know exactly what my responsibilities are as a Minister and it does not involve me creating a crime plan. So, when I hear particularly some who ought to know better calling on me to create a crime plan, I wonder.”
“If I had a crime plan and it was up to me, I will lock up all of them who does be talking you know, starting from people on the other side in the Parliament, some of whom I think don’t deserve the attention that they have only marginally had,” the minister stated.
Hinds added: “So, a crime plan is not for me, it is for the police and I am aware of what the police have planned and the strategies along with the Defence Force which they are operating.”
“In addition, my job involves providing all of the resource in accordance with budgetary allocations … My job also involves encouraging and supporting and upholding the rule of law, and tenets of the Constitution and encouraging them (law enforcement) to uphold the law.”
In reference to talk about calling a State of Emergency, Hinds said when the SoE was imposed in 2011, the then Police Commissioner, Dwayne Gibbs, did not even know there would be one.
“That will not happen with us. We are far more astute. So asking me whether to establish a State of Emergency is far-flung and outside my remit. We will take our remit from the law enforcement,” he added.tatabeen a feature of our society for many years.”
He said the regional symposium will “be considering whether there are new approaches to responding to crime.
“There is a strong case that using law enforcement to attack criminality has its value but there is a strong case that we have to respond with a lot more than that,” he explained.
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