If To­bag­o­ni­ans hope to see a re­duc­tion in crime lev­els that have marred the is­land's rep­u­ta­tion as a safe and peace­ful des­ti­na­tion, it will not be done by op­pos­ing every ac­tion the po­lice and oth­er state agen­cies take in sup­port of law and or­der.

A few weeks ago, we saw the im­ma­ture cha­rade of 'obeah' rit­u­als be­ing brought to bear against Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers who sought to crack down on il­le­gal ve­hi­cle tints and oth­er in­frac­tions un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles Act.

Those be­hind it fool­ish­ly felt they were en­ti­tled to be ex­empt­ed be­cause of the ab­surd no­tion that Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers from Trinidad should not be 'ha­rass­ing' To­bag­o­ni­ans, and con­ve­nient­ly ig­nored the fact that the of­fi­cers were seek­ing to ad­dress law­less­ness.

Last week, we saw yet an­oth­er dis­agree­ment be­tween some To­ba­go res­i­dents and the po­lice who, in part­ner­ship with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), be­gan evict­ing il­le­gal ven­dors from the road lead­ing to Pi­geon Point beach, in the area pop­u­lar­ly known as Swal­lows.

In this case, the out­cry was chan­nelled along sen­ti­men­tal lines, as those op­posed to it fo­cused heav­i­ly on the pre­vail­ing eco­nom­ic hard­ships the ven­dors were be­ing put un­der, and less on the fact that their ac­tions were un­law­ful. This is not un­com­mon when it comes to evic­tions.

How­ev­er, while the ar­gu­ment whipped up pub­lic sup­port, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk brought an­oth­er per­spec­tive to the po­lice ac­tion, point­ing out that the area was fre­quent­ed by peo­ple en­gaged in the drug trade.

This, there­fore, was a two-for-one ac­tion by po­lice, as by rid­ding Swal­lows of il­le­gal vend­ing booths, they would al­so rid the area of what had be­come a plat­form for more se­ri­ous il­le­gal acts.

Snr Supt Kirk's per­spec­tive negates the no­tion that po­lice are more bent on ad­dress­ing 'small' crimes in­stead of fo­cus­ing on the big­ger crim­i­nals, par­tic­u­lar­ly since their in­ves­ti­ga­tions show that the big­ger crim­i­nals are ex­ploit­ing the po­lice's fail­ure to ad­dress the 'small' crimes, in or­der to build their il­le­gal em­pires.

The snow­ball im­pact of drug ped­dling is an in­crease in gang ac­tiv­i­ty and mur­ders.

Those cry­ing out for the po­lice to stop the ris­ing num­ber of homi­cides in To­ba­go, there­fore, have of­fi­cers like Supt Kirk to thank for be­ing re­silient to­wards ad­dress­ing the 'small­er crimes' on the is­land, while oth­er arms of the Po­lice Ser­vice im­ple­ment oth­er di­rect crime-fight­ing strate­gies.

While Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine sought to ap­pease the ven­dors by as­sur­ing them the THA was plan­ning to re­lo­cate them to a le­gal site, he al­so sup­port­ed the po­lice ac­tion against the bed­ding grounds from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in a Face­book ad­dress on Fri­day. Au­gus­tine ref­er­enced the re­cent po­lice in­ter­ven­tions at Rock­ley Vale as a case in point.

Po­lice re­cent­ly ar­rest­ed men from the area with il­le­gal weapons and drugs, to­geth­er with a large amount of US and lo­cal cur­ren­cy. The area is known by po­lice to be the home of the To­ba­go Sixx gang.

To plead with the po­lice for an end to mur­ders in To­ba­go, while at the same time cry­ing out to them to stop tak­ing ac­tion against 'small' il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty is, there­fore, coun­ter­pro­duc­tive be­hav­iour that can re­sult in dan­ger­ous ef­fects lat­er down the road.

To­bag­o­ni­ans must let the po­lice do their job on all fronts. One sim­ply can­not have one's cake and eat it too.