Caribbean security chiefs yesterday got down to serious work on the second day of their three-day meeting here and the creation of a regional rapid response unit and request for international assistance to fight rising crime are among several initiatives under active consideration.
Several military and police chiefs from the Caricom 15-member nation bloc are attending the meeting, which opened on Wednesday at Grand Coastal Inn on the East Coast Demerara. The security top brass of the region are meeting at a time when crime and violence have escalated across the region. The meeting has taken on greater significance for Guyana in the wake of the two recent slaughters at Lusignan and Bartica which claimed the lives of 23 people.
Chief-of-Staff of the Guy-ana Defence Force, Commo-dore Gary Best, told media operatives just after the luncheon break yesterday that the security officials were making significant progress so far. He said they were working hard to come up with concrete steps to address the rising crime problem across the region as well as to present a raft of recommendations to regional leaders at their crime summit slated for next month in Trinidad and Tobago. Best told reporters that the region had to harmonise its fight against the crime scourge, noting that the criminals were collaborating to conduct their nefarious business and if they could do so, then as security chiefs they must do the same. Best said that their focus yesterday was to come up with recommendations aimed at protecting the well-being of citizens and preventing criminals from moving across the region. He said that in this context they were hoping to revive the Caricom Operational Planning and Co-ordination Staff (COMPACS) and the Implementation Agency For Crime and Security (IMPACS), which were created for last year’s Cricket World Cup. Best said it was within the COPMACS framework they would be working to create the regional rapid response unit.
T&T Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, who has lead responsibility for security in the region, had floated the idea of a regional rapid response unit back in February. Speaking at a dinner in Jamaica in late February, Manning called for a fully trained and equipped rapid response Pan-Caribbean law enforcement unit to police the region. He said then that the security challenges of the region demanded a well-trained and equipped unit that could operate legally in any Caricom country in time of need. He listed some of the Caribbean-wide challenges as: “…the global traffic in illegal drugs, which employs our region as the route northwards for this pernicious trade and which fuels the trade in illegal arms, gang warfare, kidnapping for ransom and an unacceptable level of homicides in our main urban centres”. The situation, he said then, had been exacerbated by both growing illegal migration and the deportation to the region of criminal elements from some metropolitan countries.
Several Caribbean leaders have supported Manning’s initiative, which was discussed at the just concluded Inter-sessional meeting in the Bahamas. It is expected that next month’s crime summit will deal with the issue.
At the opening of the summit on Wednesday, Best had spoken of the need to increase the length of time a suspect could be held before being charged. At present, local law permits the police to detain someone for 72 hours before laying any charge. Over recent years, local police had been forced to approach the high court for extension of this time to question suspects. Best said his proposal was under active consideration at the meeting. He further clarified that when he called for an extension of the detention time he was being specific to suspects being held for very serious crimes.
Assistant Commissioner of St Lucia, Vernon Francois, told reporters that the meeting had been moving ahead smoothly. He said their discussions so far had been focused on crime and security in the Caribbean. Asked if any initiative was being floated to tackle the movement of illicit weapons across the region and extra-regionally, Francois said yes, adding not only arms trafficking, but drugs smuggling as well. However, he could not say what initiatives were being recommended, though he hinted that the request for international assistance was one area being examined. Other regional military and police chiefs acknowledged that the meeting was progressing well and was focused on arriving at concrete solutions. In attendance are security officials from Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Anguilla and Bermuda.
