Days after soldiers were instructed to return to the streets to patrol with police officers in crime hot spots, Opposition Senator and attorney Wayne Sturge has criticised the move saying all the military officers were doing was posing for the camera.
Sturge was contributing to yesterday’s Senate debate on a private motion brought by the Leader of Opposition Business, Wade Mark. That motion related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Sturge said that when the PNM was in Opposition in 2013 it objected to putting soldiers in joint patrols with police but in 2016 as the new Government it put soldiers on the streets to patrol with police officers following last Thursday’s killing of two teenage students in Laventille.
Sturge said the Government did it “without attempting the cover of law,” adding the measure was “not only cluelessness, it is deceitfulness.” He then said the Government was not accepting that there was a spike in the murder rate.
National Security Minister Edmund Dillon told Parliament recently there was no spike in the murder rate. There have been more than 40 murders for the year to date.
Sturge said the Government must be honest with the population, adding: “If there is a murder every day and then one day you get seven? Then what do you call it? That is not a spike? If that is not a spike I don’t know what is.”
He said the Government could not be taken seriously when it said it would ensure the safety of citizens.
Sturge noted that “bloody September” took place under the PNM Government’s watch when the highest monthly murder rate took place during that month last year.
He also knocked the impression being given by the Government that crime would be effectively dealt with if a Commissioner of Police was appointed.
“Just by appointing a Commissioner of Police somehow crime would go down? That is simply a blame game,” he said.
Sturge added: “When the murders continue unabated they will say ‘blame he’, the Commissioner of Police.”
According to Sturge: “It is disingenuous to give the impression that a Commissioner of Police will make all the difference.”
He then explained that in 2008, Trevor Paul was in office as the commissioner of police “and that (year) was the highest number of murders ever.”
During his contribution, Sturge also suggested that the Government should seek to eliminate income tax in order to achieve one of the goals of reducing inequality within the region.
He also criticised Government Senator Foster Cummings who said earlier that the former UNC and PP governments reneged on moves to have the Caribbean Court of Justice as T&T’s highest Court of Appeal and retained the London-based Privy Council, partly because it was inaccessible to the vulnerable in the country.