“The absence of a chicken means you cannot make chicken stew. You can’t kill with a gun if you don’t have a gun,”
By Sue-Ann Wayow
MINISTER of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds says that 400 murders a year in Trinidad and Tobago was too much for him to bear.
“If I had my way, 2022 would be a very rough and difficult year for criminals in this country,” he declared on Monday at a press conference at his office in Port-of-Spain.
Hinds said, the murder of every citizen should be a burden to the entire law enforcement team and that they should dedicate their entire lives to the reduction of crime, “25 hours a day.”
Hinds said some murders from 2021 still stood out in his mind as he thought about the manner in which they occurred.
The murder toll for 2021 was 448. He said for the past few years, the average has been 400 annually an “average (that) is too much for me to bear.”
Already there have been three murders reported for 2022.
Hinting on the terms white-collar and blue-collar, Hinds said “all colours” would be subjected to the law.
“But, I rely on the law enforcement platform to do that. My job is to provide them with encouragement, provide them with resources, make very clear what the Government’s policy is or would be going forward and hope that they as professionals would exert best efforts to bringing resolution of some of these issues.”
He said he already had a long conversation with Acting Commissioner of Police McDonald Jacob who outlined his murder preventative measures.
Referring to a family dispute that resulted in murder, Hinds said, “We believe that many of those murders are preventable.”
Especially with domestic disputes, he said, “I will like to see police officers responding to every call and not leaving the report alone until it is completely resolved one way or the next.”
The minister also said the easy access to guns needed to be addressed.
“The absence of a chicken means you cannot make chicken stew. You can’t kill with a gun if you don’t have a gun,” he said.
And Hinds also said he is hoping that members of the protective services, being frontline workers step up to take a Covid-19 vaccine as many of them have to interact with the public on a daily basis.
