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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Do­ma urges PM to take charge of crime...

Make division heads account

by

20160824

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma) wants Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to make di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders ac­count for the crimes in their dis­trict.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion called on Row­ley to ini­ti­ate that lev­el of ac­coun­tan­cy in the Po­lice Ser­vice, say­ing such a mod­el of man­age­ment is ab­sent from the man­age­ment struc­ture of the pub­lic ser­vices with dead­ly con­se­quences in se­cu­ri­ty, with the lone ex­cep­tion be­ing the T&T De­fence Force.

Not­ing the lat­est mur­der of nine-year-old Cy­on Paul and those of oth­er chil­dren in the past, Do­ma said: "The un­re­solved mur­ders are di­vid­ing us, iso­lat­ing the poor­er com­mu­ni­ties, as­crib­ing val­ue to some lives and ask­ing us to de­val­ue the lives of oth­ers./

"The lack of con­cern for these so-called less­er lives will in­evitably in­vade our think­ing in oth­er ar­eas of na­tion­al life and even­tu­al­ly de­stroy our so­cial fab­ric. It will stain fur­ther, our rep­u­ta­tion and make us a bas­ket-case des­ti­na­tion for lo­cal and for­eign in­vest­ment."

It added: "We wish to re­spect­ful­ly sug­gest that the Prime Min­is­ter take charge at once of the ef­fort to save the lives of those whom the so­ci­ety is be­ing asked to de­val­ue.

"In our view, the Prime Min­is­ter should give the sig­nal that our na­tion is de­ter­mined to save these lives re­gard­less of whether they are 'known to us' or 'gang or drug-re­lat­ed' and that these lives mat­ter."

Do­ma said it be­lieved that forc­ing di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders to give an ac­count, per­haps on a week­ly ba­sis, would ob­lig­ate the heads to ask the same of the ranks be­low them, who will in turn fil­ter the ques­tions down through the ranks, from se­nior su­per­in­ten­dents to the con­sta­bles, who are most pub­licly vis­i­ble to the peo­ple.

"Who bet­ter to start this des­per­ate­ly need­ed line-man­age­ment mod­el but the per­son with the high­est rank, the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, our com­man­der in chief, the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T," Do­ma said.

It not­ed that sev­er­al months ago, Row­ley had stat­ed that "the di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders of the Po­lice Ser­vice have to an­swer for the crime in their dis­trict and to them the coun­try must turn for the an­swers they are look­ing for about all the killing that is tak­ing place."

Do­ma thus called on Row­ley to "fol­low through on his as­tute re­marks with the ac­tion that our coun­try needs."

Do­ma al­so sug­gest­ed that a week­ly meet­ing of di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders, in­clud­ing the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, DCPs and rel­e­vant ACPs, be con­vened at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice with the haste that the task of sav­ing lives re­quired.

"Take one dis­trict, one coun­ty, one neigh­bour­hood and solve one mur­der, make one ar­rest and get us back on the road to hope. The pow­er of the ac­count­abil­i­ty mod­el for di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders will lead us to hold the mur­der­ers them­selves ac­count­able," it said.

"We must de­mand that the 'killers walk­ing among us' an­swer for their sav­agery to the ranks above them, ini­tial­ly to the de­tec­tives and the con­sta­bles in the charge room, then to the DPP and fi­nal­ly to a mag­is­trate or judge," Do­ma added.


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