FUL Audit ‘To Make Your Hair Stand’ – Rowley

THE persons entrusted to protect citizens from crime are also some of the persons facilitating it, says Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

That, according to the prime minister, who is also head of the National Security Council, is more frightening.

Speaking during an interview on TV6’s Morning Edition on Thursday, he said the issue of corruption with public personnel was not new and read statements from a CARICOM report published in 2013 which states that the criminals are being supported by facilitators, consisting of unscrupulous and corrupt professionals withing key sectors of the economy.

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Dr Rowley also said there was a legal push in the US to export small arms and ammunition.

That together with information from a current audit into the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) firearms unit was enough “to make your hair stand.”

A significant number that was entering the country legally were being used in criminal activities.

He said, “What we are discovering now by the audit that is taking place in the police service, is that there is a great likelihood that a significant amount of the ammunition that comes into this country legally, ends up in the hands of criminals.

“The police department that was meant to manage and control the availability of firearms in society, has become corrupted to the point where some facilitators, are another arm of the problem that we have to deal with.”

Dr Rowley said, “The very people who are supposed to be guarding us from this outcome have been and are facilitators of it. That is the frightening thing. The breakdown of the institutional protection.

The entry of arms and ammunition into the country is of paramount concern to government on the legal and illegal levels, the prime minister said.

With the increase in criminal activity, the workload of the police has also increased greatly.

Dr Rowley said, “As the numbers increase, the workload of the police increase exponentially. So when you get to 600 murders, just picture it. It might be eight or ten or twelve persons doing that killing but the workload of the police to find, to investigate each one just increases to the point where there is a constant stream of requirement to find out who would have done that. 

“Extract that person and then you get to a place in the law if an I is in the wrong place or a T is crossed in the wrong angle, then they back out on the streets.”

He also said that he still wants to work with the opposition and other stakeholders to fight crime. 

But Dr Rowley  said that some politicians enjoyed the situation of the day because it worked in their favour.

And without mentioning any names he said, “I didn’t expect that I would be in a situation where I would see people who are eminently disqualifiable, by virtue of their association with criminal conduct actually being lionised (by people) as saviours and heroes in the political arena.”