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“[…] Perhaps everyone, with the exception of members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS), recognises that declaring a SOE is a clear indication that the respective state apparatuses falling under the umbrella of national security are acknowledging their collective failure to protect citizens.
“[…] Apparently a handful of thugs are capable of running rings around the combined institutions which make up National Security—all stacked with highly paid operatives, blessed with lofty titles and every perk and incentive one can think of, including state-sponsored uniforms, vehicles and family-pack security…”
The following Letter to the Editor on the current State of Emergency (SoE) was submitted to Wired868 by Rudy Chato Paul Sr of D’Abadie:
Photo: OPM.
Like many, I too woke up to learn that our lovely twin island state has been placed under a state of emergency (SOE). Again.
While trying to digest the reasons submitted, and browsing through social media, I came across a quote attributed to Thomas Sowell which says:
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
Photo: TTPS.
As usual, I have more questions than answers. And though many of them might be purely rhetorical, methinks they are worth sharing.
Perhaps everyone, with the exception of members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS), recognises that declaring a SOE is a clear indication that the respective state apparatuses falling under the umbrella of national security are acknowledging their collective failure to protect citizens.
Then again, I am reminded of a former minister in National Security who unambiguously stated that protecting citizens was not his concern.
Citizens are now forced to surrender our constitutional rights and simply accept that we are now placed under an SOE.
There is nothing we can do because apparently a handful of thugs are capable of running rings around the combined institutions which make up National Security—all stacked with highly paid operatives, blessed with lofty titles and every perk and incentive one can think of, including state-sponsored uniforms, vehicles and family-pack security.
As a former prisoner, I am quite aware that prisoners cannot communicate with anyone on the outside unless a message is passed through several parties from visits or other means of communications, including two-way radios thrown over the walls of remand yard Port of Spain, or, in today’s world, cell-phones.
Is the Ministry of National Security, or whatever it is being called today, so incompetent and void of solutions that the entire nation must pay for its massive incompetence? Does this constitute 21st century policing?
Whatever happened to the jamming devices secured by the prison system years ago to prevent prisoners from making and or receiving calls?
I do vaguely recall prison officers were against it, since they claimed: “it prevented them from the use of their cell phones.” A typical case of the tail wagging the dog.
(via TT Prisons.)
In 2015, jammers were purchased and installed at the cost of US$10 mil, under Minster of National Security Edmund Dillon and Minister of Justice Prakash Ramadhar.
Why in 2024 are we still having problems? It was also suggested at one time that Strategic Servies Agency (SSA) gather and information decipher. We recently learned that the SSA was as dysfunctional as they come.
Another brain surgeon in National Security, Griffith, was against the jammers claiming that phone calls coming out of prison could provide vital information.
If gathering valuable information was so important as to allow for the discontinuation of the use of the jammers, what information has been gathered in the last 10 years?
Have any charges been laid against anyone involved in any of the murders of several prison officers? Who were/are the shot callers?
I also recall a story by Mark Bassant, sometime early last year, which stated that prison authorities acknowledged 20 hits were ordered from behind prison wall. They said they could prove this “based on intelligence.”
Question: how many men have been charged?
Another question for the authorities: Who are the people introducing the cell phones and other contrabands to the prison system? Who are the people searching, scanning, and checking visitors to ensure that contraband items are prevented from entering the system?
If there are people assigned to search for and prevent contraband from entering the prison system yet contraband items still find its way in, then those people are either inefficient or/and incompetent; or both. They must be removed-forthwith.
(via AZP News.)
If they are efficient and competent, then a simple process of elimination points to two possible sources: lawyers and, the obvious, prison officers. These two groups of people can only be ruled out providing the checkpoints for visitors is strictly monitored and rules rigidly enforced.
Keeping an eye on the suspected gangsters or shot-callers is useless. It’s easy to recruit some unsuspecting, non-descript, low-level prisoner to have item or items introduced.
All prisoners then are suspect and must be treated the same level of security. Every visit warrants the same level of attention. And every prison officer must be thoroughly searched.
(via Caribbean National News.)
Given the batching system used in recruiting, doing this is much easier said than done. Perhaps this procedure needs to be conducted by forces external to and independent of the prison system.
But as long as a SOE remains a tool of choice for the TTPS, it will remain their go-to strategy, because it requires the least amount of effort and energy.
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Rudy Chato Paul, Sr, is passionate about gardening, music and writing and boasts post-graduate certification in Anthropology, Criminology and Sociology. He also studied Theology, which is why he is actively seeking to make Trinidad a better place rather than waiting for divine intervention.
We continue to fall prey to all kinds of slick talking con artists who pretend that they could hook us up with the best of everything (a solution to crime, more foreign exchange to chase after endless amounts of foreign goods, no taxes and bigger increases in salaries etc) including the sun and moon. Sadly we (some of us) have fallen hook line and sinker for the con. That laziness was evident from the onset when we were told that we should forget the proven gas supplies that lie a couple kilometres from our border. All because uncle Sam didnt approved. Rather than getting down to the task of using diplomacy and other means to convince trump and his cronies of the importance of this project to our future wellbeing. Instead our PM choose to show her alleigance to a foreign power than to the country she has been charged to govern. Get use to the new dispensation of choosing the path of lease resistance/less work. This is being aided by what seems to be an equally languid/lazy opposition.
well said, Mr Paul