Many of us sit on the sidelines and bemoan the TTPS. We decry them everyday in some form or the other. On one hand we are either complaining of poor service and police misconduct and on the other of high crime and blaring sirens.
However, on March 21, I attended the Roll Out of the TTPS Operating Plan 2016 and it was by far one the of best events I've attended for the year. And I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to attend.
As a PhD candidate in Criminology it was a true blessing to me. I saw an organisation with a clear direction and strong leadership. The Commissioner of Police, Mr Stephen Williams, took a data-driven approach to his entire presentation as he communicated the goals of his 2016 operational plan to the employees of the TTPS. He also quite convincingly illustrated that our nation, last year, recorded its lowest serious reported crime total for the last 33 years. Now it is not the first time I've heard this statistic and many, including myself, have argued that it is the unreported crime that explains this decrease.
However, it is very unlikely that the 50 per cent decrease in serious reported crime that we experienced over the last seven years could have happened by underreporting. In 2009 there was just over 22,000 serious reported crimes and in 2015 there was just over 11,000.
The suggestion that 50 per cent or so people just stopped reporting serious crime is a far stretch of the imagination. People do not just stop reporting auto theft, kidnapping, burglaries, breakings etc. Human behaviour, quite frankly, does not work like that.
Instead, the more likely conclusion is that something caused this phenomenon. Now without any rigorous inferential analysis we have to exercise caution in trying to explain this decrease. But I do submit that if we "blast" the police when crime is high then we should commend them for this all-time low in serious crime. And we need to look for answers to explain this phenomenon.
But for now I am in the bleachers cheering on the TTPS for 2016 and as the old folk used to say "give Jack his Jacket."
Keron King,
Arima.