GILLIAN LUCKY

In the fight against crime, sta­tis­tics play an im­por­tant role in de­ter­min­ing whether there is any progress by those in­volved in all as­pects of law en­force­ment.For some time now, even be­fore this regime was elect­ed in­to of­fice, the crime sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try was a front burn­er is­sue. In fact, the in­abil­i­ty of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion to put a han­dle on es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty was used by the then Op­po­si­tion to show that the Man­ning regime need­ed to be re­moved.This Gov­ern­ment promised the peo­ple in May 2010 that it would re­store law and or­der to our coun­try and win the con­fi­dence of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens with the pro­vi­sion of a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan that, when im­ple­ment­ed, would re­sult in a marked re­duc­tion in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

To date, de­spite re­peat­ed promis­es and shuf­fled min­is­ters, the pop­u­la­tion still awaits the rev­e­la­tion of the much an­tic­i­pat­ed an­ti-crime mea­sures that will have the de­sired ef­fect of pre­vent­ing, de­ter­ring and de­tect­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.And while it would be un­fair to in­dict this Gov­ern­ment for the grave prob­lem of ram­pant crime which it in­her­it­ed, this regime must ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for not ad­dress­ing the sit­u­a­tion in a com­pre­hen­sive and holis­tic man­ner.

Track­ing Fig­ures

A look at the fig­ures for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to April 30 shows that the de­tec­tion rate for se­ri­ous crimes re­port­ed re­mains at a dis­mal av­er­age of 14 per cent.In a time when tech­nol­o­gy and sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods can be used to solve crime, it is a pa­thet­ic state of af­fairs that the de­tec­tion rate is so low.For those who have boast­ed that there has been a de­crease in the com­mis­sion of se­ri­ous crimes, re­liance must have been placed on par­tic­u­lar fig­ures such as the num­ber of mur­ders mov­ing from 35 for the month of Jan­u­ary, up to 46 in Feb­ru­ary, down to 19 for March and again 19 for April.

The use of these four fig­ures sug­gests that mur­ders are on the de­cline but many would ar­gue that the use of this four-month pe­ri­od is in­suf­fi­cient to de­ter­mine a mean­ing­ful trend.In any event, the Gov­ern­ment should be con­cerned that the de­tec­tion rate for mur­der was ze­ro per cent for the month of Jan­u­ary and while it rose to 11 per cent for the re­main­ing months, the over­all rate is whol­ly un­ac­cept­able by all stan­dards.In the fight against se­ri­ous crime, de­tec­tion rates for each of­fence in this cat­e­go­ry should be noth­ing less than 40 per cent, and even that per­cent­age is set­ting a very low bar.

Big Talk

If the crime sit­u­a­tion could have been solved by boast­ing, pro­pa­gan­da and gun talk, then this regime and those be­fore it would have al­ready won the war against crim­i­nals.Some politi­cians, past and present, have used plat­forms to warn crim­i­nals by send­ing mes­sages that they should "be aware"–but "aware" of what? The crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to hold law-abid­ing cit­i­zens hostage while they com­mit crimes for which they are not caught and brought be­fore the courts.So with the great­est re­spect to the lat­est Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty who as­sured the pub­lic ear­li­er this week– "make no mis­take, I in­tend to con­tin­ue to keep up the pres­sure on the crim­i­nal el­e­ments"–the truth is that these words ring hol­low in light of the re­al­is­tic state of af­fairs with re­spect to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.I can on­ly hope that this min­is­ter will not be lured in­to the false be­lief that big talk with no mean­ing­ful ac­tion will put crim­i­nals on the run.

Words in Ac­tion

Many years ago, the point was made that the de­tec­tion rate for solv­ing vi­o­lent and se­ri­ous crimes was on the de­cline. In or­der to ad­dress that sit­u­a­tion, and in light of the in­crease in gangs and gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders, the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SAUTT) was es­tab­lished.In the ear­ly days of its op­er­a­tion, I was part of the cho­rus that ques­tioned the op­er­a­tions of the elite SAUTT Unit. There was lit­tle placed in the pub­lic do­main about its spe­cif­ic role in the fight against crime and un­for­tu­nate­ly, by the time the ac­com­plish­ments of SAUTT were dis­closed, its dis­man­tling was al­most com­plete.

While it is agreed that SAUTT ought to have had been made a le­gal en­ti­ty, ev­i­dence has been giv­en by its mem­bers and ad­mit­ted in courts of law through­out the land in pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries and tri­als.To sug­gest, there­fore, that its ac­tiv­i­ties were il­le­gal is far from the truth, as those mem­bers who were di­rect­ly in­volved in law en­force­ment were ei­ther serv­ing mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice or made SRPs and there­fore ac­count­able to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and bound by the same rules and stand­ing or­ders that gov­ern po­lice of­fi­cers in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

While SAUTT was in ex­is­tence, de­tec­tion rates for mur­der had climbed to 33 per cent so clear­ly it was do­ing some­thing right.And now it is time for those in charge to get it right, if our crime sto­ry is to have a hap­py end­ing.