WHILE the defence force is currently operating with half of its naval fleet, its biggest challenge is members doing patrols with police, because that is not part of their training.
Speaking to a joint select committee (JSC) on March 15 that was recorded and replayed on Monday, Chief of Defence Staff Air Vice Marshal Darryl Daniel, when asked what was the biggest challenge facing the TT Defence Force, said members ``maintaining their core training responsibilities.” He added that any country with a military would want its military to remain so and not be transformed into law enforcement.
“When we go out and do patrols with police, we are doing something that, generally, we haven’t trained for, and it puts my personnel in a challenging position, because their training is to do certain things, and it is not law enforcement. It is not 'to protect and serve.' (The motto of the police.) That is the biggest challenge.”
To address that, he said the defence force trains police on operational planning and executing operations effectively, which he said is something the police may not be experts at, when compared to the military. This is part of the defence-force plan to make the police proficient in running operations and make them more effective, and thereby more successful.
“This will result in the requirement of the defence force not being there working alongside the police. Until then, we will continue to do it, because we have been doing it for some time.”
THE JSC was titled “Evidence session to gain an understanding of the collaboration between the defence force and the police in the implementation of anti-crime strategies to address criminal activity.”
Lieut ColAshook Singh, director of operations for the defence force, told the JSC the police and army joint patrols began in 2001, “when criminal gangs and illegal guns persisted,” resulting in the formation of the Inter-Agency Task Force to deal with gang violence.
He added that with the increase in the ease of gangs' acquiring guns with greater sophistication and quantities of ammunition, the police requested more help from them.
“In 2017 the defence force increased assistance to the police to conduct patrols in all divisions and collaborated on intelligence sharing. In 2021, there were 11,333 joint patrols and in 2022 there were 8824 patrols,” Singh said, adding that the difference in patrols came as a result of the state of emergency, when the defence force carried out patrols by themselves.
Responding to questions about the available fleet, Daniel told the JSC that it is currently operating at 50 per cent capacity, as seven of its vessels are in need of maintenance and are dry-docked. He explained that at the beginning of the pandemic, the maintenance crew returned to the Netherlands and the defence force is renegotiating the contract for maintenance. He added that there is some work that can be done internally, but his members are awaiting the necessary parts to do those repairs.
Four of the six Damen vessels bought by the People’s Partnersh
