NATIONAL Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds called on the public to show support to the police by providing information and intelligence, instead of taking matters into their own hands.
He made the call in his budget contribution on at the fourth sitting of the House of Representatives on Monday following the reading of budget 2024.
'Some say the solution to our problems is more guns and more ammunition, following the philosophy wrongly adopted by that last commissioner,' Hinds said.
'This Government is more focused on the restrictive policy where firearms are going to be granted to those who can demonstrate that they need them, and not simply because you are someone's friend...
'Some people feel that the solution is to stand your ground and shoot back, and 'knock it,' and 'mattic' and all of that.
'If the law enforcement of this country took that bad advice, do you know what kind of chaos we would have?'
He opined that if Government strengthened and further professionalised the police, tooled them with the necessary know-how and equipment, and passed the right laws to support law enforcement, the country could fight crime without the 'madness' that he said would come with a 'stand-your-ground' philosophy.
Hinds said police were solving murders at a significant rate, pointing out that police had arrested two people in connection with the Guanapo murders which saw four youths killed. But he said the rate of murders was still too high.
He said in 2022 there were 605 murders and 458 for this year, up to the time he received the figures. He added that, for the year, 63 of 2023's murders had been detected and 22 from previous years. He added that 90 people were charged for murder in 2023.
'This is why the gun-retrieval and ammunition-retrieval exercises and the border-security issues are so critical and important.'
Hinds said police conducted 345,000 patrols in 2022, and for this year it conducted more than 311,000 patrols.
He said the Inter-Agency Task Force - a combined task force of police and military officers - was out in force. However, the public is still crying out for more police presence, and as such he commended Finance Minister Colm Imbert's proposal to triple the amount of police officers trained and dispatched to protect and serve.
He also highlighted a national gun retrieval exercise put in place by government and led by an assistant commissioner of police and a major in the TT Defence Force.
'Last year we began a process of dismantling 7,000 guns,' he said.
He added that police had recovered 521 firearms for the year - 96 revolvers, 298 pistols, 35 shotguns, 11 sub-machine guns, 62 rifles using 5.56 mm or 7.62 mm ammunition and 18 home-made rifles.
He called on the public to provide information to police on the locations of firearms.
'If you can help yourself by identifying the presence of these lethal items, please do so. Because the life you save may just be your own.
'The more guns we get, the more the public supports the police in getting these guns
