Police, Army Chiefs wind up meeting in Georgetown
THIS Easter weekend coincides with a new series of “special” meetings focused on crime and security, made necessary by rampant criminality in too many CARICOM jurisdictions and the dire warnings of challenges facing the criminal justice system.

Concluding today (Good Friday) will be a three-day “extraordinary joint meeting” in Guyana of the Caribbean Community’s Standing Committees of Police and Military Chiefs that started on Wednesday, ahead of a special session of CARICOM’s Council of Ministers responsible for National Security and Law Enforcement.

These meetings are in preparation for a “special summit” of the Community’s Heads of Government next month in Port-of-Spain at which will be discussed a proposed “Strategy and Action Plan” with a stated objective to “stem the rising tide of violent criminality”.

That was the pledge made by the Community leaders at their recent two-day Inter-Sessional Meeting in The Bahamas.

Not known is what precisely they have requested of the region’s Police Commissioners and Military Chiefs to help make useful the scheduled meeting of Ministers for National Security and Law Enforcement.

This observation is not to be expediently confused as a suggestion to place in the public domain sensitive security intelligence.

Rather, it is the noted absence, from a bland official announcement, which failed to provide even minimum basic information for the public to appreciate what new initiatives CARICOM’s political directorate really plan to pursue next month in Port-of-Spain that have hitherto escaped their work agendas over the past seven years.

That, incidentally, is the period extending from the 2001 cataclysmic terrorists attacks on the USA and the rampaging criminality in our region that has resulted in thousands of gun-related murdered victims, including the recent mind-boggling massacres of innocent people at Lusignan and Bartica in Guyana in the worse manifestations of domestic terrorism in this region.

Stakeholders’ concerns
The Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police (ACCP) has been sharing ideas and good practices during their annual conferences. From what is known, however, the ACCP seems to be missing in action when it comes to their inputs in decisions by the region’s political directorate.

One of the concerns of some stakeholder representatives of the private sector and civil society organisations is what data exist on the population of criminal deportees who are often quickly linked to violent criminality in a number of CARICOM countries.

Instead of recurring speculations, it is felt that there should be information on how many of the deportees have actually been linked to criminal gangs; the spate of murders, kidnappings for ransom and armed robberies, as well as what’s being done to promote their rehabilitation and a positive lifestyle.

There are citizens, traumatised by the upsurge in criminal violence, who think that blaming criminal deportees may also be an excuse of convenience for failures by law enforcement agencies to successfully hunt down home-grown and flourishing criminals engaged in gun-running, narco-trafficking and ruthless acts of multiple murders.

Then there is the dreaded phenomenon of state witnesses in murder and other serious criminal cases being killed, either prior to testifying in court cases, or shortly afterwards, while others are often terrorised into expediently suffer from amnesia, in the face of an effective criminal justice protection programme in any CARICOM state.

We hear a lot of talk about CARICOM-USA cooperation to enhance crime and security arrangements.

But there is also a perception within CARICOM that a significant segment of our governments’ crime and security programmes are often more driven by Washington’s concerns, with an emphasis on its own national interest, than what originates in the region in support of our own priorities.

We now await the outcome of the forthcoming special CARICOM Summit on crime and security in Port-of-Spain to learn what new “strategy and action-plan” will unfold.