Yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley did lit­tle to in­spire con­fi­dence in any sig­nif­i­cant turn­around in the coun­try's crime woes any­time soon.

For the most part, Dr Row­ley sought the pub­lic's un­der­stand­ing of how we got here rather than where we are go­ing.

On the heels of the Prime Min­is­ter's trip to the US, where he met with FBI and CIA of­fi­cials, we ex­pect­ed Dr Row­ley to share sol­id mea­sures to en­gen­der hope for a brighter 2024.

That cer­tain­ly was not the case.

Rather than ex­pound on how those dis­cus­sions are like­ly to im­pact the dire crime sit­u­a­tion, Dr Row­ley came armed with a 2017 Man­pow­er Au­dit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which, it would seem, has the an­swers to deal­ing with the flaws with­in the TTPS so as to make it bet­ter able to deal with the run­away mur­der rate and vi­o­lence we've been fac­ing.

Read­ing from the au­dit, Dr Row­ley high­light­ed just how woe­ful things are with­in the TTPS, ref­er­enc­ing a line that says it is in "a very trou­bled and wound­ed state" that re­quires sig­nif­i­cant turn­around.

The Prime Min­is­ter spoke to the need for a po­lice in­spec­torate and bet­ter man­age­ment at the top to erad­i­cate cor­rup­tion, which re­quires con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments in Par­lia­ment, and fo­cused on mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sup­port­ing the pro­posed amend­ments that would come.

While it is all well and good to dri­ve leg­isla­tive changes, it is baf­fling that the Prime Min­is­ter is on­ly now con­vinced that a doc­u­ment draft­ed un­der his Gov­ern­ment sev­en years ago is the gold­en com­pass that points to the way for­ward.

By dust­ing off an­oth­er old plan, Dr Row­ley must tell cit­i­zens why his Gov­ern­ment failed to see its im­por­tance be­fore and why it takes prece­dence now, on­ly af­ter the horse has al­ready bolt­ed.

The rec­om­men­da­tions of this au­dit to re­form the Po­lice Ser­vice re­quire the Op­po­si­tion's sup­port in the Par­lia­ment for its suc­cess.

Yet, while recog­nis­ing how much the Gov­ern­ment needs the Op­po­si­tion's align­ment with their vi­sion, the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ued to ar­gue why he does not need to be part of a Gov­ern­ment team to meet with the Op­po­si­tion on an­ti-crime talks.

While Dr Row­ley in­sists that the Op­po­si­tion wants to see crime con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit their chances in next year's gen­er­al elec­tion, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try wants to see law en­forcers gain the up­per hand against the ruth­less, vi­o­lent crim­i­nals who have in­vad­ed our peace of mind and free­doms.

Blam­ing the oth­er side and seek­ing to jus­ti­fy why things are how they are now with­out lead­ing us out of the rut, does noth­ing to en­cour­age law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

The Gov­ern­ment must be will­ing to hon­est­ly ac­knowl­edge that de­spite re­peat­ed promis­es over the last 12 months since Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­placed Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, things have on­ly got­ten worse.

The 2017 TTPS au­dit and the leg­isla­tive changes re­quired to ef­fect it may have some an­swers, but the frus­tra­tion among the pop­u­la­tion does not give the Gov­ern­ment room for long-term fix­es alone.

Un­til re­al ac­tion be­comes ev­i­dent, the buck stops with the Prime Min­is­ter.