To combat migrant smuggling, human and drug trafficking, and other types of transnational organized crime, the government is close to finalizing an agreement known as a memorandum of understanding (MoU) framework for Maritime Security Cooperation between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.
Fitzgerald Hinds, the minister of national security, recently stated this in Parliament during the budget discussion.
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In addition to being resolved, he claimed that a draft of the Caricom Arrest Warrants Treaty existed, “in the atmosphere, thanks to the AGs of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago who have been working with their counterparts in the region. We are on the cusp of settling that arrest warrant which will help us in finding our fugitives among our islands and elsewhere”.
The Riverine Unit of the TTPS and the Coast Guard’s newly furnished, improved command center, according to Hinds, should improve the control of the boundaries from the shore. He claimed that due to the fact that weapons in this nation were being hidden in “some of the strangest places” and some were even buried, the nation was negotiating with the UNODC to acquire a number of more metal detectors. He noted, “Metal detectors are critical in finding them to remove them from the hands of criminals and form part of the law enforcement stockpile.”
According to Hinds, the Government is also negotiating the addition of additional drones for use in managing the nation’s border. He mentioned that 5,744 pounds of marijuana and 10,514 kilograms of cocaine were taken from ships along the maritime boundary in a single week in September. He said that legislation changes were being prepared that would enable the Forensic Science Centre to conduct tests for chemical precursors.
According to Hinds, Trinidad and Tobago was successful in securing the Caribbean Crime and Gun Intelligence Unit’s establishment there, which would improve regional investigations into gun crimes that are driven by intelligence.
The permanent and portable scanners that will be purchased in 2024, according to him, will “take us a long way in improving our port security.”
According to him, the government must act in a spirit of international collaboration to combat this criminal plague, which is why the government hosted a crime symposium in April. According to Hinds, society’s morals have changed, and too many individuals now appear to be able to cover up, defend, and promote wrongdoing. Others, he said, believed that the current state of the law and legal precedent favored the offender over the victim.
Narcotrafficking, small arms and light weapon trafficking, irregular migration, including human trafficking, terrorism, cyberattacks, climate change, and global health pandemics were listed as the seven “enduring threats to our safety, security, and well-being” that the nation was facing. The majority of these threats, he claimed, were represented by transnational crime, where vast and well-organized organizations seek to “kill, destroy, extort, bribe, and threaten.”
Regarding the Fire Service, he stated that 84 non-residential fires were among the 454 incidents to which it has responded so far this year. He said that the government had just purchased two water rescue vessels and launched a mobile water system, enabling the Fire Services to get water from any open source, including rivers, the sea, swimming pools, and other bodies of water.
