In the cur­rent “crime sea­son” the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice should be high­ly-mo­ti­vat­ed and “pos­sessed of re­li­gious zeal like Je­ho­vah’s Wit­ness­es, go­ing door to door, crim­i­nal to crim­i­nal, taxi to taxi, hunt­ing down guns and crim­i­nals,” says Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Fitzger­ald Hinds.

“That’s the lev­el of mo­ti­va­tion they’re sup­posed to be op­er­at­ing with,” Hinds added at a me­dia brief­ing Mon­day.

The me­dia con­fer­ence was called to ad­dress the lat­est crime spike and pleas for im­prove­ment.

Hinds par­tic­u­lar­ly thrashed the Op­po­si­tion for non-sup­port of an­ti-crime laws.

Hinds said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and po­lice lead­er­ship were try­ing to mo­ti­vate of­fi­cers and while he felt Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s been try­ing hard, he said, as hap­pens in many T&T sec­tors, on­ly about 40 per cent in the po­lice ser­vice ex­erts max­i­mum en­er­gy.

He con­grat­u­lat­ed Grif­fith for “per­spi­cac­i­ty and very hard work”.

Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment is aware of the pain, fear and trau­ma which the pub­lic is feel­ing fol­low­ing 24 killings last week. He not­ed re­ac­tion in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and state­ments like “lit­tle com­fort”.

“So the Min­is­ter (Stu­art Young) is be­tween a rock and a hard place want­i­ng to say some­thing to bring com­fort to cit­i­zens, but hav­ing so done, there are those who feel it makes no dif­fer­ence,” Hinds said.

“This sit­u­a­tion we’re hav­ing in T&T is a very se­ri­ous­ly chal­leng­ing one and every­one in the fear, pain and trau­ma would look to the Gov­ern­ment and more­so, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter for pro­tec­tion and re­lief. That’s nor­mal, but as Min­is­ter Young and many of us would have ex­plained, the job of the min­is­ter/gov­ern­ment is to pro­vide pol­i­cy di­rec­tion for, pro­vide re­sources to, and the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive plat­form so law en­force­ment can do its work,” he said.

Hinds added, “The min­is­ter can make pol­i­cy, the prime min­is­ter could talk from here till dooms­day—the re­al­i­ty is, it’s the law en­force­ment agen­cies that have a job to do once they get pol­i­cy di­rec­tions from the Gov­ern­ment, the re­sources they re­quire and once they get the leg­isla­tive plat­form with­in which they can law­ful­ly op­er­ate.”

“I’m not a po­lice of­fi­cer, Stu­art Young isn’t a po­lice of­fi­cer—we don’t do noth­ing. We make pol­i­cy, we pro­vide fi­nan­cial re­sources and we go to Par­lia­ment and make laws. Judge us on the ba­sis of what our role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is. But we’re not the on­ly ones in the Par­lia­ment and we’re not get­ting the co-op­er­a­tion and sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion which has a role to play to pass laws in cit­i­zens’ in­ter­est,” Hinds added.

Slam­ming UNC MP Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan’s stance that the Op­po­si­tion won’t sup­port spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty laws, Hinds said the cri­sis T&T faces some­times re­quires dra­con­ian laws. Ac­cus­ing the Op­po­si­tion of hypocrisy, he said cit­i­zens have a du­ty to speak out.

“Take off your par­ty hat and if the Op­po­si­tion isn’t act­ing in your in­ter­est, say so,” he told the me­dia con­fer­ence.

To those call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to do some­thing about crime, he said Young and the po­lice had al­ready said what they’re do­ing and are about to do.

Hinds said the re­moval of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion port­fo­lio from Young wasn’t a “knee-jerk” re­ac­tion to the spike in crime.

“My prime min­is­ter doesn’t func­tion like that. He’s a man of great, deep thought. He plans his Cab­i­net. I have rea­son to think that (ap­point­ment) was on the agen­da long be­fore last week’s events. The prime min­is­ter’s a high­ly in­tel­lec­tu­al and acute­ly-able politi­cian. He thinks then acts,” he said.