Ke­van Gibbs

In my late teens and ear­ly twen­ties, the week af­ter my Christ­mas fes­tiv­i­ties was all about de­cid­ing where I would ring in the New Year. I did the Old Year's night par­ty scene at all lev­els in my day-from par­ty­ing in the East with The Pro­fes­sion­als at their an­nu­al Michelle's house par­ty, to be­ing a so­cial hob­nob at the Hilton Trinidad-ring­ing out the old and bring­ing in the new was about cel­e­bra­tion. To­day, how­ev­er, as I say good­bye to the joys of Christ­mas, I am once again faced with the chill­ing is­sue of the high mur­der rate in this twin is­land re­pub­lic. On De­cem­ber 31, 2008 I de­signed a front page for this pa­per us­ing the pho­to of a dead body, with a toe tag of the Trinidad and To­ba­go flag. The lay­out rep­re­sent­ed 2008's record-break­ing mur­der rate of just over 550 peo­ple. It was a year dom­i­nat­ed by gang vi­o­lence.

Crime cracks Back then, the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion seemed im­po­tent in deal­ing with the crime prob­lem that con­tin­ues to stalk our land. Us­ing every­thing from the in­fa­mous blimp to the se­cret wire tap­ping tech­nol­o­gy, noth­ing seemed to work in the PNM's fight against crime.

If Calder Hart's Ude­cott scan­dal is what brought down the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, it was the ever in­creas­ing crime prob­lem that first laid the cracks in its foun­da­tion. With a change in gov­ern­ment came a some­what un­re­al­is­tic sense that the crime prob­lem was solved at the bal­lot box. In the months that fol­lowed the elec­tion, this sense of false hope was al­so be­ing fu­elled by the sud­den drop in the mur­der toll when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2009. In the last few weeks, how­ev­er, a sud­den spike in gun re­lat­ed mur­ders has brought the coun­try to a sud­den jolt of re­al­i­ty. If no oth­er crime is re­mem­bered in 2010, the brazen killings of An­ton Jim Jones and by­stander San­dra Hen­ry in Mara­bel­la on Mon­day has been im­print­ed on our minds for years to come.

Lead­er­ship mat­ters

The crime chal­lenge now faced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be an old one, but it is one that she must tack­le head on.With­in hours of the Prime Min­is­ter pre­sent­ing her long await­ed three-step crime plan, there was an is­land­wide crack­down on the na­tion's hotspots in­volv­ing some of the our se­nior cops. And where was our new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Dwayne Gibbs dur­ing all of this? Host­ing a chil­dren's Christ­mas par­ty at his of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St James. Now that a crime plan has been laid, Gibbs needs to ral­ly his troops by show­ing that he is now the na­tion's #1 crime buster, lead­ing the charge from the front­lines and not from his of­fice. Say­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar's plan "sounds very good to me," not on­ly falls short but can even be seen as in­sult­ing to a pop­u­la­tion who has put their faith in him.

The hon­ey­moon is not just over, but has come to a stage where he needs to sit and dis­cuss the clear roles he is ex­pect­ed to play in the re­la­tion­ship. The soft-spo­ken news con­fer­ence per­sona of the Com­mis­sion­er needs to be re­placed by the all-or-noth­ing, win­ner-takes-all ap­proach; Lead­er­ship to­wards not on­ly get­ting the job done, but done in a way that pro­duces a high lev­el of re­sults is what has been miss­ing from our po­lice ser­vice. Gibbs needs to pub­licly state how he in­tends to work with the plan laid be­fore him, es­tab­lish­ing a clear bench­mark by which cit­i­zens can judge his suc­cess or fail­ure.

It took T&T years to fi­nal­ly get a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and it would be very dis­ap­point­ing if the one who has fi­nal­ly got­ten the job proves him­self to be noth­ing more than a lame duck, bid­ing his time be­fore he is asked to leave. Wait­ing to see what the fi­nal tal­ly of mur­dered Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are in or­der to judge crime-stop­ping suc­cess is now un­ac­cept­able.