We could bury our heads in Mara­cas sands while look­ing out at a gold and blue sun­set. Still, I guar­an­tee you that every cit­i­zen and res­i­dent of this coun­try gets at least one mas­sive anx­i­ety at­tack every time they glance at a news­pa­per. But you can’t es­cape it. So, even if you stop read­ing news­pa­pers while buy­ing as­pirin from the phar­ma­cy, your eye can land on news­pa­pers with the head­line “FIVE MORE CIT­I­ZENS MUR­DERED” with pho­tos of the mur­dered in the top row of the front page.

And if you’re tempt­ed to turn the page, you will see an­oth­er head­line “Homi­cide de­tec­tives are in­ves­ti­gat­ing four mur­ders in Pe­nal which oc­curred over the past 12 hours, in­clud­ing a triple mur­der.” Turn that page, and you get “Crim­i­nals us­ing 3D parts to boost small guns–study.”

Be­neath that is a sto­ry of a body found with “an al­most sev­ered head” in Table­land. You leave the phar­ma­cy a mess, look­ing over your shoul­der in the mid­day sun.

All the shark and bake and ole talk in the world can’t take away the re­al­i­ty that we are the SIXTH in the world of the most crim­i­nal coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to the World of Sta­tis­tics and the World Pop­u­la­tion Re­view.

We are wary. Fright­ened to go for a walk in a park.

Ban­dits have over­tak­en the land. And they are an­gry. They are in­vad­ing homes, us­ing guns like play­things, and threat­en­ing to de­rail schools with bomb threats.

We know why. We know why.

It could start with our 40 per cent of school dropouts (while the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion strug­gles with ab­sent prin­ci­pals, shelved lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes, trou­bled gun-filled neigh­bour­hoods where gang lead­ers take the role of par­ents, dis­grun­tled teach­ers fac­ing vi­o­lence from stu­dents and par­ents).

This slots in with the steady ar­rival of weapons (an ex­change for al­low­ing traf­fick­ers from Eu­rope and the US as trans­ship­ment points for drugs?). These coun­tries will con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing and ex­port­ing arms while trig­ger­ing free mur­der­ous na­tions like ours, the knuck­les for vi­o­lence (old colo­nial sto­ry).

So the po­lice face thou­sands of men shoved to­wards the pow­er of join­ing the un­der­world quick bucks and with noth­ing to lose, cool with risk­ing their al­most in­evitable ear­ly bul­let deaths.

The deep and wide prob­lem in­ter­con­nects with a sag­ging ju­di­cia­ry and a scrap­py wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, which means that killers of some 500 vic­tims a year are get­ting away with mur­der.

This con­nects with more des­per­ate cit­i­zens who are al­so call­ing for arms.

Vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors are an­gry so peo­ple kill over a sour con­ver­sa­tion, a few dol­lars.

So­lu­tion?

One for­mer T&T CoP Dwayne Gibbs (Cana­di­an) spoke of 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing, a digi­tised utopia (de­spite our oil bucks and brain pow­er, we can’t get there) where po­lice punch in a sus­pect’s name on their phones and their en­tire crim­i­nal his­to­ry comes up, where po­lice­men will be on the road and not sit­ting in po­lice sta­tions, where re­ports won’t take for­ev­er. It wasn’t al­lowed to hap­pen. Gibbs was fired. Gary Grif­fith was promis­ing, ea­ger, and strong, but he over­reached and fell.

No mat­ter their style, var­i­ous CoPs have not been able to de­liv­er, so I’m keep­ing my fin­gers crossed that this lat­est po­lice plan will get re­sults.

Our po­lice ser­vice does its best, but some­thing in that sys­tem is not work­ing. Wor­ry­ing­ly mem­bers of the po­lice force are reg­u­lar­ly charged with crim­i­nal be­hav­iour, so it’s not a case of bad ap­ples but a cur­dled opaque po­lice force that will re­quire a pow­er­ful team. It will take more than a po­lice plan to deal with this. More than the well-mean­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

It will take the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion, So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Fi­nance, Trade, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, For­eign Af­fairs, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice in tan­dem with any sup­port­ing coun­try to help with bor­der con­trol and in­tel­li­gence.

Ja­maica’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Dr Ho­race Chang re­cent­ly re­port­ed that ma­jor crimes were down by a whop­ping 20 per cent and mur­ders by 17 per cent. How? Chang said the Ja­maica po­lice force did it by ramp­ing up in­tel­li­gence, “in­clud­ing leg­isla­tive tools such as the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) and States of Pub­lic Emer­gency (SOEs).”

Maybe we need a Ja­maica-type of SoE?

There are dis­tress­ing sig­nals–a rise in vig­i­lante think­ing from the fright­ened and an­gry pub­lic deal­ing with in­creased home in­va­sions by or­gan­ised ban­dits and in­creased ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings. Giv­ing cit­i­zens guns to de­fend them­selves will mean ban­dits will come for the guns. There will be more bod­ies on our killing fields. That po­lice plan bet­ter be good.

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Ira Math­ur is a Guardian jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in the cat­e­go­ry of Non­fic­tion ( 2023).