Any comfort citizens got from the news that serious crimes have decreased as T&T deals with the COVID-19 pandemic quickly disappeared. Within hours of National Security Minister Stuart Young's comments on the issue at a Ministry of Health media briefing, the bloodshed began to escalate.
First there was the gruesome discovery on Wednesday evening of two mutilated bodies in Guapo, Point Fortin. The murder count increased by two more just hours after that with the shooting deaths of siblings Vishanie and Vishal Chitbahal at their Windsor Park, Couva, home.
The five murders committed in just that 24-hour period was very much in line with the frequency of such crimes in pre=pandemic T&T. It looked like business as usual for the killers who so easily take lives and then slip back into the shadows with very little risk of ever being caught and convicted.
On the fact of it, it doesn't look like pandemic restrictions are in any way to hindrance to the killers that walk among us.
However, to better understand the current situation, a deeper examination of crime statistics for the period is required. The data shows that Minister Young is in fact correct when he states that serious crimes have gone down compared to the corresponding period last year.
This is borne out by figures just released by the Crime and Problem Analysis (CAPA) Branch of the T&T Police Service (TTPS) which show that the serious crimes recorded last month were 741, a definite decrease from the 1, 135 in March 2019.
The devil is in the details. A breakdown of this year's figures show that the 741 serious crimes include 35 murders; 48 shooting and wounding incidents; 29 reports of rape, incest and sexual offences; and 189 robberies.
But the murder figures---the statistics of greatest concern to most citizens---are almost identical to last year and, for that matter, the year before.
This suggests that COVID-19, which has radically changed so many aspects of life in T&T, has not hindered the gunmen who are continuing to carry out their gang-related killings even as the vast majority of citizens function under social distancing and stay at home restrictions.
The greatest irony is that the slaughter continues unabated even with more police roadblocks and patrols.
While efforts to keep crime and criminality down are to be applauded, events that have unfolded in just the past 24 hours do not give credence to Minister Young's claims of these heightened efforts actually making T&T a safer place.
Somehow the miscreants are finding ways to slip though gaps in the security system and there has been no letting up in the gang warfare which contributes the most to T&T's high levels of violent crimes.
If the killings continue at the current rate, the country could already be well on the way to equalling or exceeding last year's murder count. That is a record we should all be trying our best to avoid.