Ira Math­ur

www.iras­room.org 

Now that 2022 has been de­clared the dead­liest year ever for homi­cide with over 600 homi­cides and T&T edg­ing once again to the du­bi­ous dis­tinc­tion of be­ing among the most mur­der­ous in the world with no di­rect cam­paign for safe­ty from the Gov­ern­ment or po­lice, it would be easy to pre­tend it's not hap­pen­ing. Call it bat­tle fa­tigue, de­nial, shock, or what­ev­er. It's im­pos­si­ble to live like this– hy­per­vig­i­lant. Look­ing over your shoul­der. Bet­ter to think of Car­ni­val. Don't think of the bod­ies pil­ing up in the morgues. Bet­ter to go numb. Guess who else is numb to crime? The crim­i­nals.

Af­ter I vis­it­ed the Port-of-Spain prison some years back, I un­der­stood some things. Noth­ing hu­man can shock pris­on­ers on death row. Show them a man with a bul­let through their brain, an ac­ci­dent vic­tim with their brains scram­bled like eggs, a woman choked and shot, or a child shot through the chest, and they won't blink. Nor­mal. Nor­mal. Why? Be­cause they grew up around such con­sis­tent bru­tal­i­ty that it is nor­malised. They were beat­en and abused, and the next day their par­ents act­ed as if noth­ing had hap­pened. It comes from un­healed wounds in­flict­ed by colo­nial mas­ters who, al­though they are ir­rel­e­vant to­day, have left their mark.

Dur­ing colo­nial­ism, we sup­plied Eu­rope and the US with sug­ar and cot­ton, and now we al­low the same coun­tries that man­u­fac­ture arms a safe har­bour to trans­port drugs. Il­le­gal guns are every­where. They have been com­ing in steadi­ly for decades with im­puni­ty af­ter the at­tempt­ed coup. The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has re­port­ed­ly said that over 12,000 il­le­gal guns are at large, and 87 per cent of the mur­ders are due to firearms. The Guardian re­port­ed in No­vem­ber that some 28,000 guns were seized be­tween 2017-2022, worth $350 mil­lion.

Who is bring­ing in the guns? Then the small­er fry: Jan­i­na Pawelz, a re­searcher from the In­sti­tute for Peace Re­search and Se­cu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ham­burg (IF­SH), who spent four months in 2015 in­ter­view­ing peo­ple in gang dis­tricts, im­plies that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have been black­mailed for decades by gang lead­ers who are giv­en CEPEP fund­ing and con­trol of com­mu­ni­ties in re­turn for keep­ing gun vi­o­lence un­der con­trol. Pawelz re­vealed the para­dox of hand­ing out make-work con­tracts (CEPEP etc) to gang lead­ers, en­abling them to buy more guns. We have part of the an­swer.

The oth­er fi­nanciers of il­le­gal arms re­main evil and shad­owy, with the blood of the boys who they use as pawns on their hands. In 2020, I re­port­ed that, ac­cord­ing to Pawelz, an army of gangs–around 30,000 strong in 2015, had tak­en us over. It's prob­a­bly swollen to an army of 40,000 now.

But the 600 deaths and the gun fail­ures are al­so a re­sult of in­com­pe­tence at sev­er­al lev­els. Look at the in­sti­tu­tions with blood on their hands. 

Cus­toms: Last year, it was re­port­ed that arms were com­ing in con­tain­ers (not in the dead of night) but in front of the eyes of cus­toms of­fi­cers with faulty scan­ners

Po­lice: The po­lice need to step up to deal with a wa­ter­tight wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, weed­ing out the rot­ten eggs and cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal foot­print of crim­i­nals.

Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion: The po­lice can claim that gang-based vi­o­lence re­quires sup­port­ive leg­is­la­tion, An­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion, gun courts and per­mis­sion to hold sus­pects caught with guns in cus­tody for longer pe­ri­ods.

Ju­di­cia­ry: Re­search shows that the crit­i­cal de­ter­rent to crime is not the sever­i­ty of the sen­tence but the like­li­hood of crim­i­nals be­ing caught and pros­e­cut­ed. Cas­es take a life­time to process. Ex­cus­es in­clude a short­age of pros­e­cu­tion ju­di­cial and le­gal aid staff, out­dat­ed process­es for court ap­pear­ances, plea bar­gain­ing, deal­ing with po­lice of­fi­cers not turn­ing up in court, and poor pro­tec­tion for wit­ness­es. 

Politi­cians: On the one hand, they are forced to ne­go­ti­ate with the crim­i­nals, so we don't get shot up, and on the oth­er, they refuse to sup­port one an­oth­er in the coun­try's best in­ter­est. They are com­fort­ably numb as they sit in Par­lia­ment with eyes half closed, mak­ing sanc­ti­mo­nious nois­es on hear­ing mur­ders cross 600 in 2022 or that a six-year-old girl Kylie Mal­oney was shot in the chest and still refuse to sup­port leg­is­la­tion that could have pre­vent­ed her death. This numb self­ish neg­li­gence from all who owe us a du­ty of care to keep us safe leaves them with blood on their hands while cit­i­zens are hunt­ed like dai­ly prey.

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