PM: New special unit to weed out rogue cops

The Prime Minister says he has agreed to create vetted units in the police service, groups of special police officers who are vetted to ensure their integrity is intact, to weed out corrupt police officers.

At the People’s National Movement’s candidate launch at Harris Promenade in San Fernando on Saturday night, Dr Rowley said he agreed to do so in a recent meeting with the Minister of National Security and US experts.

“Because one of the problems that we have is that there are too many criminals in the police service. So when you're going after the non-police criminals, they have their friends in the police service to tip them off.

“And we have to have vetted units. And I'm telling this country that we are prepared to pay extra to police officers in those vetted units if they will maintain their integrity and help us to root out the criminals in the police service, in the customs, in immigration and in the Parliament.”

He said members of the units would be examined and given polygraph tests regularly because information and confidentiality was a matter of life and death as corrupt officers put people’s lives in danger.

He added that it was the responsibility of citizens to help the police by providing information on criminals or criminal activity if they had knowledge of them.

Rowley admitted violent crime was a problem in the country but said the answer was not stand-your-ground legislation which would more easily arm citizens and reduce home-owners’ liability in cases of self-defence against home intruders.

He said the policy of "flooding the country with guns" had failed in countries around the world, including the US. He said TT’s system to get a legal firearm was good but it had been corrupted by some police officers.

Speaking of local government reform, which would give corporations more power, resources and autonomy as well as make the position of councillor a full-time one, he said it was necessary at this time to better manage the billions of dollars had been spent developing the country.

“Our national budget is a billion-dollar thing, multi-billion-dollar thing. You know how many years Dr (Eric) Williams was in Prime Minister Office, Chief Minister office, before a billion dollars in front the governmental as a budget? But today in this country, billions and billions and billions and billions.

"San Fernando, how you could manage properly billions of dollars in expenditure, billions of dollars in assets, billions of dollars in ideas and programmes with the same old systems from colonial days? How can you we inherited the local government system. It was the county council. Then it became the regional corporations. Now we're talking about giving them more management responsibility because that is what your situation requires.”

He said “jokey part-time people who are not interested” was not enough to manage billion-dollar development, cities and corporations.

He claimed some United National Congress (UNC) councillors did not “bother to pick up any responsibility” after the election because they belonged to a safe seat. But, he said there were no safe seats in the 2023 local government elections.

“The victory is either for local government reform or against local government reform. If the result comes in against local government reform, it will be a disaster indeed in TT. It’s not the first time that something good is an offer and political parties opposed to the PNM, opposing for opposing sake. They don't care if people suffer in the process.”

He said the PNM did not have to undermine the country to win an election.