One sul­try day, jour­nal­ists went down­town to hear an ex­cit­ing sto­ry. Were it not a se­ri­ous mat­ter con­cern­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing, the pro­duc­ers could have billed it as a side-split­ting Anan­si pro­duc­tion. Lights, cam­era, check mics … ready … cur­tains open.

Scene one: The lead ac­tor lauds the “ex­quis­ite” work the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit and the Po­lice Ser­vice are sup­posed to have done in cap­tur­ing and con­vict­ing a man named An­tho­ny Smith. De­light­ed that T&T has achieved its first guilty ver­dict for hu­man traf­fick­ing (mind you, that was 12 years af­ter the procla­ma­tion of the law, and with sev­er­al cas­es pend­ing), the ac­tor heaps prais­es on the crime fight­ing in­sti­tu­tions. You see, the wily Smith got his tail ar­rest­ed in 2015, he was charged in 2016, the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry end­ed in 2017, he was tried in 2023, and wait for it … the scamp ab­scond­ed when the tri­al was about to start. On cloud nine, the ac­tor boasts that the law made it pos­si­ble to pros­e­cute Smith in ab­sen­tia, that he was found guilty, get­ting 15 years prison time.

Scene two: Con­vict es­capes. Elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelet gorn with he. Po­lice cyah find he. He has all kin­da records … child abuse, lar­ce­ny, aid­ing and abet­ting lewd danc­ing, il­le­gal sale of “in­tox­i­cat­ing liquor”. Eh.

Sep­tem­ber 24, 2023, around 6.32 am, when fowl-cock still crow­ing in Arou­ca, de elec­tron­ic bracelet sends an alarm. De mon­i­tor­ing unit op­er­a­tors (prob­a­bly still sleepy) say dem fol­low all pro­ce­dures and called de po­lice (dey didn’t say when dey called), but po­lice say dey see no sign of es­capee.

Scene three: Dey say steps tak­en to “pre­vent fu­ture re­cur­rences”, and “even though there is no­body in jail”, it was a sig­nif­i­cant “vic­to­ry for the coun­try’s case against hu­man traf­fick­ing”. De po­lice now run­ning hel­ter-skel­ter to find de felon “wher­ev­er he might be in T & T, this re­gion or the world”. Any­one see­ing he, call de po­lice.

Oh gawd! You feel for the vic­tims of heinous crimes and yuh tru­ly sor­ry. Yuh cyah laugh. (Re­port­ed­ly, the wit­ness in the case against Smith, men­tioned com­plic­it of­fi­cials who are al­leged to be po­lice of­fi­cers.) Fad­da!

Scene four: Un­mind­ful of de place where dey live, de play­ers per­form su­perbly. De leader drama­tis­es the in­cred­i­ble feat, say­ing, “We would have demon­strat­ed to the Unit­ed States that we took con­trol of this mat­ter and most of all, it is in­tend­ed to say to our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners that T&T is do­ing all that we can, con­tribut­ing to the world’s ef­fort in deal­ing with this transna­tion­al crime that is now called hu­man traf­fick­ing … The sys­tem worked par­tic­u­lar­ly well.” “Jus­tice pre­vailed.”

The au­di­ence want tuh dead. Anan­si grins. La Di­a­b­lesse stamp she cow foot. Soucouyant want blood. Douens bolt back­ward, Ma­ma Dg­lo spit fire, La­ga­hoo hide in he cof­fin, and Pa­pa Bois won­ders what bush tea dey drink­ing. Be­fore the cur­tains closed, the folksy au­di­ence is urged not to see the es­cape as a “stain on the sys­tem”.

Oh my! Breathe out. The lack of hu­man traf­fick­ing con­vic­tions was a main rea­son for the coun­try’s Tier 2 pro­ba­tion­ary rat­ing by the US De­part­ment of State, so hope­ful­ly, the con­vic­tion of Smith will be viewed pos­i­tive­ly. Smith wasn’t the first es­capee with an elec­tron­ic bracelet, and rea­son­able peo­ple will ac­cept that no sys­tem is fool­proof. But we know the sad his­to­ry of non-func­tion­ing se­cu­ri­ty equip­ment, in­clud­ing Port scan­ners, DNA test­ing, se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, and po­lice ve­hi­cles. No­body is ever held ac­count­able, fore­cast­ing the same fate for new sys­tems like lie de­tec­tors.

Days af­ter the show, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­tro­duced “the Test­ing and Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Bill” to Par­lia­ment, (lie de­tec­tor leg­is­la­tion). He de­clared that in­ves­ti­ga­tors are “lim­it­ed” be­cause they can­not ap­ply the “best stan­dards, the best prac­tice, and the best sci­ence” to as­sist them and em­ploy­ers.

No one would ar­gue against in­vest­ing in vi­able ini­tia­tives, but we don’t need a lie de­tec­tor to tell us that the biggest lie is that the sys­tem will work here as it has in oth­er coun­tries. We don’t have a rep­u­ta­tion for ef­fi­cient­ly main­tain­ing pub­lic prop­er­ty and dis­ci­plin­ing man­age­ment, in­clud­ing by their fir­ing, for pre­ventable sys­tem fail­ures. Worse, the lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty mil­i­tates against suc­cess and is a heavy tax­pay­er bur­den.

The cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is in­te­gral to pub­lic con­fi­dence. While it is im­por­tant to give cred­it for demon­stra­ble good per­for­mance and to keep the elec­torate in­formed, it is not wise to demon­strate clue­less­ness about re­al­i­ty.