Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er has made east Port-of-Spain the sub­ject of his al­most con­tin­u­ous at­ten­tion over the last few weeks. The re­sult has been a sig­nif­i­cant drop in crime in the area and sev­er­al en­gage­ments with res­i­dents that have ranged from the in­cen­di­ary to the ab­surd.

Af­ter all that time, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter should be ready to talk about the out­comes he's hop­ing for be­yond this ar­ti­fi­cial­ly in­duced re­duc­tion in crime. While Mr Warn­er has sought to frame the east Port-of-Spain in­ter­ven­tions in terms of crime pre­ven­tion and so­cial al­le­vi­a­tion, he has al­so missed no op­por­tu­ni­ties to blame the op­po­si­tion PNM for Laven­tille's prob­lems and as­ton­ish­ing­ly, at­trib­uted a re­cent mur­der there to the par­ty.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter's keen­ness to cre­ate an un­blem­ished record of peace in the dis­trict seemed to mo­ti­vate his ill-ad­vised de­ci­sion to try to stop the dis­tri­b­u­tion of crime sta­tis­tics to the me­dia. These gaffes have led po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists to cross-ex­am­ine the project as a po­lit­i­cal ploy.

As a po­lit­i­cal ini­tia­tive, an­a­lysts are unan­i­mous that the ef­fort is like­ly to fail as a way of im­prov­ing vote counts for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in the dis­trict, an unas­sail­able strong­hold of the PNM since it first came to pow­er in 1956. "His agen­da is to make po­lit­i­cal in­roads," said po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, "And I don't think that will hap­pen."

Still, Jack Warn­er can le­git­i­mate­ly claim to have spent more time in Laven­tille in the last four weeks than most politi­cians and af­ter hear­ing the com­plaints of the res­i­dents, he must have a much clear­er idea of the scope of the chal­lenges he faces in mak­ing a suc­cess­ful in­ter­ven­tion in the area.

The peo­ple of east Port-of-Spain will al­so have tak­en the mea­sure of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, and any suc­cess he hopes to reg­is­ter with this project will come from earn­ing their con­fi­dence in his will­ing­ness to com­mit to the long term work that the area needs.

Mr Warn­er's next steps in the area will be cru­cial in defin­ing his ca­reer as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and in demon­strat­ing the Gov­ern­ment's will­ing­ness to in­vest in man­ag­ing crime through a com­bi­na­tion of ef­fec­tive polic­ing and in­vest­ments in so­cial in­ter­ven­tion.

Right now, that prospect doesn't seem promis­ing. At the launch of the Hoops for Life ini­tia­tive, Mr Warn­er was al­ready threat­en­ing the stick even as he set forth a buf­fet of car­rots, warn­ing that should this sports project fail, oth­er, ap­par­ent­ly less char­i­ta­ble ef­forts in the com­mu­ni­ty as­sured­ly would not.

It's un­clear how the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter ex­pects to ex­pand the en­forced peace won by an ar­ti­fi­cial­ly am­pli­fied po­lice and army pres­ence in­to a suc­cess­ful an­ti-crime en­gage­ment in east Port-of-Spain.

As use­ful as Hoops for Life and the re­cent­ly an­nounced projects to bring more jobs to res­i­dents might be, they are re­al­ly on­ly the most re­cent remix of the type of make-work projects and dis­trac­tions that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have ap­plied to Laven­tille over the years.

The on­ly re­al re­sult of such pro­grammes has been the sap­ping of the am­bi­tion of the cre­ative and en­tre­pre­neur­ial peo­ple of east Port-of-Spain and the en­trench­ment of a de­bil­i­tat­ing de­pen­den­cy on these cyn­i­cal hand­outs.

Re­al change will on­ly come when the Gov­ern­ment com­mits to ad­dress­ing with the range of stag­nant so­cial in­di­ca­tors that have crip­pled the area, from ed­u­ca­tion to em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty. Jack Warn­er may be tempt­ed to see this crime re­sponse as an en­gage­ment be­tween him­self and Laven­tille, but it's re­al­ly a tan­go be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and crime with east Port of Spain as the stage.

The mu­sic the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter sets for this will de­fine whether this is a point of di­ver­gence from the past, or just one more failed an­ti-crime prance.