With ten mur­ders al­ready re­port­ed this year and To­ba­go al­ready close to sur­pass­ing the to­tal of 14 for all of 2023, it is un­de­ni­able that the is­land’s es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion ne­ces­si­tates a thor­ough re­view and re­assess­ment of polic­ing meth­ods.

And while Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine has been vo­cal about the need for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to take more de­ci­sive ac­tion against this grow­ing con­cern, we al­so be­lieve that Mr Au­gus­tine has some ex­plain­ing of his own to do when it comes to his pro­pos­al for the es­tab­lish­ment of a ded­i­cat­ed To­ba­go po­lice force.

Giv­en that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for con­trol­ling crime cur­rent­ly falls out­side the THA’s re­mit, we note that such a move would re­quire le­gal ap­proval.

And while Mr Au­gus­tine claims to have al­ready re­ceived such ap­proval, we fur­ther note that the con­cept of a To­ba­go po­lice force is noth­ing new, but one that has failed to se­cure the nec­es­sary par­lia­men­tary ap­proval since it was first in­tro­duced to the pub­lic through a draft THA Po­lice Bill more than two decades ago.

It is worth not­ing that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion ac­knowl­edged the need for an amend­ment to the THA Act, as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters are not cur­rent­ly with­in the Fifth Sched­ule of the Act, which out­lines the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the THA as a se­mi-au­tonomous gov­er­nance unit.

In­stead, all na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters are cur­rent­ly gov­erned by the act’s Sixth Sched­ule, which de­lin­eates the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for both Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Un­der the cur­rent law, the THA lacks ju­ris­dic­tion over de­part­ments and staff man­aged by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing po­lice units and of­fi­cers.

How­ev­er, as part of re­cent leg­is­la­tion aimed at achiev­ing more au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, the amend­ment pro­posed in the shelved THA Po­lice Bill was rein­tro­duced.

That pro­posed amend­ment sug­gests that the Sixth Sched­ule be amend­ed to read, “Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty (save and ex­cept that in­ter­nal polic­ing shall be un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment).”

This leg­is­la­tion is cur­rent­ly un­der re­view by a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment. There­fore, Mr Au­gus­tine’s con­fi­dence in es­tab­lish­ing a po­lice unit in To­ba­go im­plies that he has con­sult­ed and re­ceived as­sur­ances from the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing their sup­port for the au­ton­o­my leg­is­la­tion when it re­turns to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. If this is in­deed the case, Mr Au­gus­tine should say so in­stead of leav­ing room for spec­u­la­tion.

It wouldn’t be en­tire­ly sur­pris­ing if the Gov­ern­ment sup­ports this move, con­sid­er­ing that pre­vi­ous THA chief sec­re­taries from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, Orville Lon­don and Kelvin Charles, al­so pur­sued the es­tab­lish­ment of a po­lice unit in To­ba­go.

Ad­dress­ing the fu­ner­al of late THA chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles in Jan­u­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley pledged that the bills would be rein­tro­duced in Par­lia­ment this year.

The ques­tion now is whether Mr Au­gus­tine’s pro­posed To­ba­go po­lice unit aligns with the leg­is­la­tion.

With­out such clar­i­ty, To­ba­go and, by ex­ten­sion, the pub­lic in Trinidad will not be able to prop­er­ly as­sess the mer­its and de­mer­its of the pro­pos­al.

Con­cerns will in­clude the de­lin­eation of au­thor­i­ty be­tween mem­bers of this unit and of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, as well as its in­de­pen­dence from po­lit­i­cal pres­sures to pro­tect civ­il rights and lib­er­ties.

With­out open and hon­est dis­cus­sions with the peo­ple, Mr Au­gus­tine cre­ates un­nec­es­sary scep­ti­cism over the move to es­tab­lish a To­ba­go po­lice unit.