The main func­tion of a po­lice ser­vice is pre­ven­tion and de­tec­tion of crime, us­ing var­i­ous strate­gies to stop crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, build pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ships with the pub­lic and keep com­mu­ni­ties safe.

Po­lice of­fi­cers are sup­posed to catch se­ri­ous of­fend­ers and en­sure their con­vic­tion, so that oth­ers are dis­cour­aged from lives of crime or even ven­tur­ing an in­frac­tion or two.

In all these ar­eas, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is an abysmal fail­ure, as ev­i­denced by its own sta­tis­tics. A re­port in Mon­day's T&T Guardian con­tains sta­tis­tics from the TTPS's Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA), which show that of the 91 mur­ders com­mit­ted for the year so far, on­ly eight have been solved–a de­tec­tion rate of less than 10 per cent.

Over­all, the av­er­age de­tec­tion rate of the TTPS has plum­met­ed in re­cent years from a dis­mal 24 per cent to 14 per cent. The da­ta looks even worse com­pared to rates in the UK, with a pop­u­la­tion of about 60 mil­lion peo­ple and a de­tec­tion rate of close to 75 per cent and the US, with a pop­u­la­tion of 312 mil­lion and a de­tec­tion rate of close to 72 per cent. Such a low de­tec­tion rate means that hun­dreds, per­haps thou­sands, of vi­o­lent crim­i­nals are es­cap­ing jus­tice. No won­der so many cit­i­zens have lost faith in lo­cal law en­force­ment.

While it is true that there are no quick fix­es for crime–long-term in­vest­ment and ef­fort are es­sen­tial–im­pos­ing harsh­er laws will be of no ef­fect if crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to es­cape se­vere con­se­quences for their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.The on­ly so­lu­tion is to work to­ward high­er de­tec­tion rates which will dis­cour­age the crim­i­nal lifestyles that too many in T&T con­tin­ue to en­joy.

The ef­fec­tive­ness of a high crime de­tec­tion rate was un­der­scored in a study done last year by Civ­i­tas, a reg­is­tered char­i­ty in the UK which car­ries out re­search and ed­u­ca­tion­al work to fa­cil­i­tate in­formed pub­lic de­bate on im­por­tant is­sues.

Ac­cord­ing to that study, even a small in­crease in de­tec­tion leads to sub­stan­tial re­duc­tions in crime and plays a sus­tained role in pre­vent­ing crime.It is there­fore im­per­a­tive that act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and his ex­ec­u­tive in the TTPS be­gin ur­gent and im­me­di­ate ef­forts to re­verse their low crime-de­tec­tion rate.While they're at it, they should se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er the views of head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Gillian Lucky who, in a re­cent news­pa­per col­umn, iden­ti­fied two de­vel­op­ments tied to the low de­tec­tion rate–the dis­man­tling of SAUTT and the de-com­mis­sion­ing of the blimp. SAUTT fo­cused on best prac­tices in in­ves­ti­ga­tions, us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to de­tect and iden­ti­fy crim­i­nals and was tak­ing law en­force­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the area of crime de­tec­tion, to the next lev­el, Ms Lucky wrote.

How­ev­er, the pre­vi­ous regime ig­nored calls to en­sure the unit was op­er­at­ing with­in a le­gal frame­work and to pro­mote its ac­com­plish­ments, so the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment wast­ed no time in dis­man­tling it. In the case of the blimp, its achieve­ments in the fight against crime are un­known to the wider pub­lic. Im­me­di­ate ac­tion is need­ed. There will be se­vere eco­nom­ic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences if T&T con­tin­ues to be bur­dened with a weak, in­ef­fi­cient po­lice ser­vice.