Why not follow other countries’ crime plans?

It looks to me as if no one has a crime plan. As we can see, Mr Warner’s so-called crime plan did not work. The big family day that cost millions of dollars apparently has failed as the guns remained with the criminals.

You cannot bargain with criminals nor bribe them. I cannot understand why the criminals were not ordered to surrender their weapons. He should have given the criminals an ultimatum: either you surrender your weapons or we will take them by force. Now look what is happening—Gibbs must be laughing at us in Trinidad, or maybe he is feeling sorry for us.

The politicians need to keep politics out of crime. Crime is not UNC, PNM or PP business. Crime is everybody business. the Government and the police cannot do it by themselves. We the citizens of this country have our part to play in fixing the crime situation. Our motto should be, “When you see something, say something.” We have to be more proactive.

The churches also should play their role to help fix the crime problem and come up with some kind of solution as to how to get the guns out of the criminals’ hands. Last year in New York City, 178 guns were taken off the streets by the churches.

We know that praying is good, but we need action as well. What the churches in NYC did was they gave cash for guns. It may work or it may not work. Some people may like it, some may not, but anything is worth trying right now.

Or, what the Government should do is follow other countries whose crime rates are down. Find out what they are doing. Look at Switzerland, they have the lowest gun crime rate in the world, the population there is about 8 million. We just have a handful of people here and do not know what to do.

We should also look at Myanmar and Mali with their low crime rates. Imagine in Cambodia and Cameroon, even Bangladesh the crime rate is low. The crime rate in Bangladesh is down by 89.66 per cent. We have to try everything until we get it right. This is serious business. It is time to take a different approach towards crime, and the approach must be effective, because the criminals must not win.

Modicia Martin
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