Clarence: Gangsters' health before my mum

AGRICULTURE Minister Clarence Rambharat lamented that wounded gangsters get better treatment in public hospitals than his own mother, speaking in Tuesday’s Senate debate on the Bail (Amendment)(No 2) Bill 2019.

Touching his right knee, he said his mother had recently had a bad pain.

“My mother had a pain and it took three months for her to get an MRI done, but if she was a criminal grazed by a bullet she would have been carried into accident and emergency and stitched up.

“When a criminal is injured in a shoot-out, where do they go? In hospital under police guard. While you are on a list, police does carry them, while my parents and yours have to wait on a call from Mount Hope.”

He also quoted an attorney who said legal aid was a platinum provision for criminals. “If you were a parent needing help to read a scholarship agreement for your child and understand the legislative jargon, you could not walk into an office of the state and get free legal advice for that. But if you are a criminal in this country, you could get free legal support, on my backs and yours."

Saying it was time to even the odds, Rambharat said the bail bill would rein in gangsters toting illicit AR-15 automatic rifles.

He said the bill denies bail specifically for a “prohibited weapon” defined as “artillery or automatic firearm (such as the AR-15)” or “grenade, bomb or other like missile.” Firearms trafficking offences listed in the Firearms Bill are now added to the Bail Act.

Rambharat said previously TT had not had many illegal AR-15s but now they are pervasive. “Young men with AR-15s have come out for war. If you want to see AR’s, go to the funerals of some of the criminals. They end the evening with an AR display.” He spoke of a need for the law to highlight such high-powered weapons, separate to a generic look at “firearms.”

Rambharat said gangsters had shot AR-15's to kill in incidents at Carenage and Maracas, and was relieved no mass-shootings have taken place in TT.

He said the bill excluded any reference to pepper-spray which in other legislation was outlawed as a “noxious liquid” where it was defined as a prohibited weapon along with artillery, automatic weapons and grenades.

Rambharat said it is possible Parliament may look at corresponding legislation on pepper spray at a future date.

He concluded, “If we take one AR off the street we’ll have done our job. This bill is an easy, sensible fix to a problem that is becoming more prevalent.”