It's doubt­ful whether even the most op­ti­mistic of cit­i­zens wish­ing in the new year might be moved to pray for some­thing as as­pi­ra­tional as a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in crime in 2013, but that's the fig­ure that act­ing Com­mis­sion­er has tak­en from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter's bud­get speech, in which the Gov­ern­ment de­clared its in­tent to re­duce crime by that per­cent­age and Mr Williams is de­sign­ing his ini­tia­tives to meet that goal.

In Cen­tral Trinidad, crime was said to have dropped by 70 per cent dur­ing 2012, from an av­er­age of ten to 15 in­ci­dents a day to three to five dai­ly ac­cord­ing to Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Supt John­ny Abra­ham. The dra­mat­ic im­prove­ment was said to be the re­sult of the re­open­ing of po­lice posts in un­der­served ar­eas, as well as the re­moval of the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive cham­pi­oned by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs.

That run­ning con­flict be­tween the Cana­di­an way of do­ing things and the lo­cal method may well find its apoth­e­o­sis in the per­son of Stephen Williams, whose decades of train­ing, ex­pe­ri­ence and front­line role in the Gibbs ad­min­is­tra­tion po­si­tion him unique­ly to craft a po­lice re­sponse that will more ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It's been clear for some time that an iron fist alone won't ef­fect the type of changes that are nec­es­sary to bring crime un­der con­trol and that the vel­vet glove of com­pas­sion and strate­gic as­sis­tance must play a part in the po­lice in­ter­ven­tion in com­mu­ni­ties. The CoP, who spent part of Christ­mas Day work­ing on his the­sis for a mas­ter's in po­lice man­age­ment and ap­plied crim­i­nol­o­gy at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, must un­der­stand this quite clear­ly.

That ap­proach has be­gun to bear some fruit in Laven­tille, where of­fi­cers are com­ing to grips with the chal­lenge of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty as well as polic­ing it. It's to be hoped that those learn­ings will in­flu­ence the re­cent­ly-an­nounced ex­pan­sion of the Safe City Plan, which Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son an­nounced would con­tin­ue from Christ­mas right through to Car­ni­val with adap­ta­tions for the de­mands of the new fes­tive sea­son.

That Mr Richard­son did so while chil­dren played hap­pi­ly at last Sun­day's Po­lice Ser­vice Christ­mas par­ty at the Sea Lots Bas­ket­ball Court and Com­mu­ni­ty Fa­cil­i­ty on­ly served to re­in­force the im­age that the Po­lice Ser­vice seems ad­mirably keen to pro­mote of it­self-as im­mersed in com­mu­ni­ties both for polic­ing as well as for im­prove­ment.

The Port-of-Spain and Cen­tral Trinidad ex­pe­ri­ences with crime re­duc­tion have not been uni­form­ly felt through­out the coun­try. Com­mu­ni­ty group leader Derek John­son re­port­ed that ban­dits were steal­ing at will in the St Ann's/Cas­cade/Holo­lo area de­spite po­lice pa­trols. In St Joseph, Cordell Dan­du­lal, 18, was shot mul­ti­ple times by a killer at three in the af­ter­noon on Christ­mas Day.

These in­ci­dents are a re­minder that while the po­lice are re­port­ing a drop in mur­ders, crime on the whole re­mains a re­silient and in­ven­tive force that will call for a strat­e­gy of con­tin­u­ous eval­u­a­tion and fresh­ly tai­lored re­spons­es. When the po­lice come up with one plan, crim­i­nals will be­gin work­ing on a way to turn any flaws to their ad­van­tage.

The on­ly long-term, val­ue-fo­cused ac­tion that the po­lice can fol­low in deal­ing with crime is one that gives equal at­ten­tion to firm, de­ci­sive po­lice re­spons­es and to so­cial in­ter­ven­tion and sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness with­in com­mu­ni­ties.

A well syn­chro­nised pin­cer re­sponse to crime in our most trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties, match­ing so­cial re­form, ed­u­ca­tion and op­por­tu­ni­ty with ef­fec­tive de­tec­tion and pre-emp­tive polic­ing ap­plied con­sis­tent­ly will bring re­sults, but that work can't be dri­ven by the po­lit­i­cal need for quick, press-re­lease ready re­sults but by a mea­sured and fair rem­e­dy of so­cial heal­ing and con­sis­tent penal­ty for break­ing the law.