Prime Minister Kamla Persad- Bissessar has called for the National Security Council to make no more excuses on its failure to counter the criminals. That call should be especially loudly directed to her National Security Minister, Gary Griffith, who recently attempted to explain away the murder of over 400 people in 2013 by saying, in effect, that 50 per cent of the dead happened to be criminals killed by criminals.
He seemed to take comfort in this fact, as though it were a strategy to deal with murder, perhaps on the basis that if the criminal gangs kill off each other that would be the solution. By articulating such a position the minister takes no responsibility for the required rehabilitation of hundreds of young men from the "hot spot" areas. In directing her comments to the security services, the Prime Minister appeared to be extricating her government from its responsibility for freeing the society of the fear that is engendered by crime.
It was the People's Partnership which campaigned vigorously and with full assurance of its capacity to dramatically reduce criminal activity and kill off the cancer of violence prior to the 2010 national poll. The Government has taken credit for the reported reduction in other, non-homicide crimes and so should step up to the plate on the high murder rate in the same way it did for the reduction in other crimes.
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