Trinidad and Tobago has been under a 24-hour weekend lock down since Friday.It began immediately after Parliament approved the appointment of Canadian Dwayne Gibbs as the country’s new Commissioner of Police (CoP).
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar made the disclosure Friday night when she spoke at the the launch of The People's Partnership campaign for the July 26 Local Government election (LGE) at Mid Centre Mall in Chaguanas.
And she had a message for the new police chief - do your job or you will be fired!
"...there are benchmarks of performance and if you do not perform fire you. If you do not perform ship out...only time will tell,” she stated.
Persad-Bissessar said the stringent heavily armed police-army joint force will operate on weekend to target criminals who continue their brazen attacks on citizens. She said it will remain in force "until a dent is seen in the escalating crime situation".
She revealed that official statistics show that up until June 26 of this year there was a total of 9,665 crimes and only 1,388 were solved. That's a detection rate of only 17 per cent for the first six months of the year, she noted.
"Crimes are increasing and the detection rate is falling. We have seen the statistics and we have noticed on weekends those evil elements come out. When these criminal elements come out the murders are increasing," she said.
"Police officers and soldiers will be deployed throughout the weekend as far as we can sustain", she adding noting that the lock down is one component of a three-part plan that is aimed at ridding the country of criminal elements.
Other parts include anti-gang legislation and amendments to the Bail Act. “Those charged with gang-related offences would not be able to get bail when those two pieces of legislation are reviewed,” she declared.
The government has a strong enough majority to pass those measures even if it doesn't get the support of the 12 opposition members.
The Prime Minister also promised that the government will move immediately to fill the 1,500 vacancies that have existed for the past four years.
“We are going to advertise and recruit retired police and Defence Force officers immediately. They will sit and instruct from the offices and the young ones will go out on the beat. We must beef up security forces and we are also moving to expedite the quality of new recruits coming into the service,” she said.
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