In the face of an­oth­er hor­ren­dous pe­ri­od in which over 20 cit­i­zens have lost their lives, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob came to cit­i­zens yes­ter­day with an­oth­er old ini­tia­tive and ap­peal for them to help the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice stop the cur­rent crime surge now de­mar­cat­ed by a mur­der spree of ter­ri­fy­ing mag­ni­tude.

In the last four days, gun-tot­ing crim­i­nals have run ri­ot through com­mu­ni­ties, tak­ing lives as they went and push­ing the mur­der toll to 364 as it rolls to­wards an­oth­er 500-plus mark by year’s end.

What is even more star­tling is that crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors scour­ing scenes at some of the mur­ders this week have found emp­ty shell cas­ings from bul­lets bear­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marks of var­i­ous arms of law en­force­ment in T&T.

Not for the first time, it sug­gests mem­bers of those bod­ies tasked with pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens work­ing to­geth­er with the crim­i­nals to car­ry out ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties against the very pub­lic.

Com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob can no longer hide from the truth of the sta­tis­tics, which he, and past com­mis­sion­ers, of­ten use to cov­er up the con­tin­ued fail­ings of the TTPS.

The ev­i­dence that the TTPS is con­tin­u­al­ly los­ing ground against the gangs has lit­er­al­ly been wit­nessed by law-abid­ing cit­i­zens for sev­er­al weeks, via bru­tal brazen at­tacks —dur­ing day or night—in the heart of some of the coun­try’s busiest ar­eas.

We can say with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion that cit­i­zens are cow­er­ing in their homes, hav­ing al­ready im­ple­ment­ed self-im­posed cur­fews and re­duced their dai­ly pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties to re­duce op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­po­sure to crim­i­nals. Even with this, the crim­i­nals are go­ing right to cit­i­zens’ doorsteps via home in­va­sions with dead­ly con­se­quences.

That apart, so­ci­ety has long lost con­fi­dence in the TTPS, no longer con­fi­dent that the men and women tasked with pro­tect­ing and serv­ing them ac­tu­al­ly have their well-be­ing at heart. Tes­ti­mo­ny to this is how many of­fi­cers have gone be­fore the courts in re­cent weeks charged with var­i­ous of­fences, in­clud­ing ex­tort­ing, kid­nap­ping and mur­der­ing the very cit­i­zens they swore an oath to protest.

Of course, Com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob, along with re­hashed ini­ti­ates, has again called for an all-hands-on-deck ap­proach, de­liv­er­ing his usu­al rhetoric of fight­ing crime not be­ing the sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the po­lice.

Mean­while, cit­i­zens have heard noth­ing from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds. De­spite hav­ing pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence in the min­istry, Min­is­ter Hinds has brought noth­ing new to the ta­ble nor pro­vid­ed re­lief to arms of law en­force­ment who have been ask­ing for changes to en­able them to bet­ter un­der­take their tasks—which in it­self can pro­vide mo­men­tum in tack­ling some of the prob­lems.

The Bail Amend­ment Bill’s re­cent fail­ure would have sig­nalled to Min­is­ter Hinds that there will be no leg­isla­tive re­lief but the prob­lem re­quires more than just le­gal ma­noeu­vring to suc­ceed. No doubt, part of this process will have to be the in­ter­nal purg­ing of rogue el­e­ments of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, since they are clear­ly a ma­jor part of the prob­lem now.

If this is not a time to call out all the law en­force­ment agen­cies in a con­cert­ed ef­fort to fight this scourge, then we don’t know when that time will come. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the in­di­vid­u­als with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mo­bil­is­ing the erad­i­ca­tion ef­fort have not en­gen­dered in cit­i­zens the feel­ing they are com­pe­tent enough to achieve the de­sired goal.