The promise by National Security Minister Edmund Dillon that there will be swift justice for the murderers who took the lives of a soldier and prison officer over the last three days rings hollow.
Swift justice has not been a hallmark of policing in Trinidad and Tobago for some time now and when it happens, it often has the feel of summary justice instead of the measured prosecution of suspects in a crime.
After expressing concern about "a spate of attacks on the lives of national security officers," Major General Dillon promised, "his full commitment to ensure that the overall security apparatus of the country is strengthened to provide for the safety and security of all citizens."
It would be more honest of the National Security Minister to admit that nothing's going to happen in these cases that hasn't happened in hundreds of others as overwhelmed and undertrained detectives and forensics teams, an undersupplied and poorly supported Forensic Centre and a hopelessly clogged court system wrestle with the sheer volume of crime that demands their attention.
If the National Security Minister plans to get serious with the crime situation in T&T, he must acknowledge that it's overdue for triage, and violent crime and robbery belong at the very top of the policing and justice system's priorities.
Because the timer on national confidence in the capacity of the National Security Council to effectively respond to a two-decade long surge in crime is running down.
It's time that the council pays more attention to the regular calls by the Chief Justice for an amplification of its drug court project and move to support legislation to decriminalise recreational marijuana use in order to relieve courts of the burden of hundreds of minor cases.
It's time to get solidly behind the sputtering efforts at rehabilitation and restorative justice that have been struggling to find root in the prison system, projects that are designed to move minor and repentant offenders out of jail and into programmes that offer them an opportunity to improve their lives while making good on their mistakes.
And it's certainly time to implement serious social intervention programmes that starve the roots of violent crime by working with purpose to reintegrate the lost souls and empty minds that turn to crime after being rejected by civil society as unsuitable for meaningful work.
This country has been trying to beat crime by shooting back. It hasn't worked.
The root cause of crime, particularly violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago, isn't a lack of policing or punishment, though the deficiencies in those areas provide an added incentive for undecided potential career criminals.
The police officers who responded quickly to the plight of Samdaye Ali in Cunupia, held at gunpoint in her home on Sunday by four gunmen, are to be commended, but their action, as salutary as it was, may not help Ms Ali, who has been robbed six times in the last 15 years, to change her decision to shut down the businesses she runs on her family's compound.
Ms Ali might well have been speaking on behalf of any law-abiding citizen in T&T when she declared, "I can't do this anymore. It isn't safe."
Now, the National Security Council must grapple with the reality that working officers of the law may be the next ones to agree with her.