Roger Alexan­der’s elec­tion suc­cess, achieved with­in weeks of his en­try in­to the po­lit­i­cal are­na, fol­lowed by his ap­point­ment as Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, puts him in a work­space that is vast­ly dif­fer­ent from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), where he served for so many years.

Al­though polic­ing is a ma­jor fo­cus of his min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio and the ex­pec­ta­tion is that his decades of crime fight­ing will be put to good use in his new role, the for­mer se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer will have to de­vel­op some dif­fer­ent skill sets for the as­sign­ment he has just tak­en on.

As a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Alexan­der will need much more than the good­will that led to his vic­to­ry in Tu­na­puna, where he shift­ed a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment seat to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress with a con­vinc­ing ma­jor­i­ty.

He faces a steep learn­ing curve as he takes on the chal­lenge of a min­istry that, even with a name change and par­ing down of ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, is a heavy bur­den to shoul­der.

Al­ready set a tight time­line to de­liv­er—Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has promised to turn around T&T’s cat­a­stroph­ic crime sit­u­a­tion in a mat­ter of six months—Alexan­der will have to brace for pub­lic scruti­ny that will be very dif­fer­ent from the at­ten­tion he used to get as a for­mer se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent and one-time co-host of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Be­yond the Tape tele­vi­sion pro­gramme.

Tack­ling crime at the min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el in a coun­try where the mur­der rate of 26 per 100,000 in­hab­i­tants sur­pass­es Colom­bia and Mex­i­co is a ma­jor un­der­tak­ing, even for a man who spent most of his work­ing life on the front­lines of the bat­tle against crime.

T&T’s lo­ca­tion as a tran­ship­ment point in the hemi­spher­ic drug trade makes this na­tion an epi­cen­tre of vi­o­lence, where a dead­ly com­bi­na­tion of gangs and guns has in­flict­ed a high hu­man toll.

On the cam­paign trail last month, Alexan­der pledged “to re­move the dark clouds that are over not just Tu­na­puna but T&T.” It is now time, how­ev­er, to trans­late that talk in­to ac­tion, not with the brute force of a po­lice of­fi­cer in pur­suit of law­break­ers but by fa­cil­i­tat­ing poli­cies and pro­grammes to re­verse cur­rent crime trends.

To suc­ceed where his pre­de­ces­sors in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty failed, Alexan­der will have to find the right bal­ance be­tween pre­ven­tion and con­trol, which means mov­ing away from quick-fix states of emer­gen­cies and heavy-hand­ed law en­force­ment strate­gies. That pre­vi­ous ap­proach oc­ca­sion­al­ly yield­ed ar­rests and drug and arms seizures but al­so caused an ero­sion of trust and con­cerns about ex­tra­ju­di­cial vi­o­lence.

In the search for the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of T&T’s crime cri­sis and to mit­i­gate the vi­o­lence, the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter will have to pur­sue col­lab­o­ra­tions with agen­cies and groups be­yond the law‌ en­force­ment agen­cies un­der his purview. He should al­so re­vis­it out­reach pro­grammes, com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing ini­tia­tives and oth­er grass­roots ad­vo­ca­cy ef­forts ⁣to build trust be­tween the TTPS and cit­i­zens.

In oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, these kinds of col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts have been very ef­fec­tive in ⁣en­hanc­ing pub­lic safe­ty and ad­dress­ing the un­der­ly­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors that con­tribute to crim­i­nal­i­ty.

Along­side at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge, who has been tasked with oth­er as­pects of crime fight­ing and pub­lic safe­ty at the Min­istry of De­fence, Alexan­der should work to shift the fo­cus from ret­ri­bu­tion to re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, which is not a sim­ple un­der­tak­ing for a for­mer po­lice­man.

Win­ning the elec­tion was the easy part. Now the re­al work be­gins.