Hinds warns against bad decisions, company

BE careful of the company you keep, was a clear message conveyed by Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds at a briefing at his ministry on July 22.

While saying the authorities were trying against crime, he related the demise of two crime victims seemingly owing to the company they kept.

Hinds said law-enforcement officers could not be everywhere.

He recalled the murder of a 22-year-old woman seemingly unable or unwilling to leave an allegedly abusive relationship, but who was beaten to death on July 21.

"Her relatives and others saying she has been a long-standing victim, and with all of the help and protection that other people attempted to offer her and in fact offered her, she went right back to the scenario, and today she is one of the murder statistics. One of the 332."

Hinds recalled a wheelchair-assisted man being murdered in Chaguanas.

"Then we had a member of the Coast Guard, a young man. I officiated at his passing-out parade."

He said the young man would have gone to primary and then secondary school and then to the Military-led Academic Training Programme (Milat).

"He would have done reasonably well in there, so well that they recommended him, and he applied for, and was accepted into the TT Coast Guard as a young man."

Hinds said reports were that while in Milat, the man had "converted differently" from his parents' persuasion and had then pursued his life.

"He went into the Coast Guard, with all the benefits and protections that that accords a young man.

"Yet the reports are, he left where he lives in the west, along with another person, to go and visit someone else in Cunupia who was wanted – he a person of interest to the police – and in his company, shots were fired. And this young sailor is now deceased, to the pain of his parents and his colleagues in the Coast Guard, and to the trauma of entire society.

"One of the 332 that you ask me regularly about.

"I say these things to demonstrate that these things do happen."

He named Caribbean and European countries where such things also happened.

Newsday previously reported Junior Peters, 35, Jah-Marley Goddard, 23, and Dave Lyons, 24, were gunned down on July 14 at Pizza Boys in Cunupia.

Hinds  referred to Lyons.

On the theme of keeping bad company, a relative blamed Peters's death on his fixing a particular person's car, though the police identified that person as the gunmen's main target, according to a recent Newsday story titled: Murder victims' families warn: Don't lime with gangsters.

Hinds further warned of poor choices, by lamenting that a youngster had told him of the prevalence in TT of the illicit drug Molly, a fact confirmed to him by three others.

Molly is the slang name for 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), a hallucinogen and stimulant widely considered to be a date-rape drug.

Hinds said this to make the point that certain individuals complaining of trauma were actually themselves perpetrating trauma on others (by drug-peddling).

Hinds lamented the drug made young women less restricted.

"They are not as protective of themselves in some cases as they should be."

It induces a "most sad and depressing feeling" in young males coming down from it, making them want to use it another time, he warned, saying it sounded like classic addiction.

"To think that there are people in the same community – who will say about this and shout the loudest and all kinds of things – making this available to our children! It is heart-rending to me."

He hoped the Ministry of Health could do a public-education campaign on the dangers of drugs from the transnational drug trade.

Newsday asked how people such as retirees could get involved in programmes aimed at helping socially-vulnerable youngsters.

Hinds said the police, prison and fire services each ran youth clubs, while the defence force ran programmes at community pools such as at Morvant.

He touted Milat and MyPart as youth development programmes, as he recalled his own youthful success in the Cadet Force. People can call also call 800-TIPS, he added.

Hinds said, "Every single police station has a station council, consisting of the business people in the neighbourhood, the community groups, the local government representatives."

He said the Tunapuna council had arranged for a police operational centre to view feeds from private CCTV cameras.

"It is work, it is things that must be done, that will solve our problems.

"Those are some of the ways you can have this relationship between the community and law enforcement, in all of our national interest."