RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the pub­lic ex­press­es frus­tra­tion over the on­go­ing threats posed by home in­va­sions, drug traf­fick­ing, and gang re­cruit­ment, cit­i­zens are call­ing for more ef­fec­tive mea­sures to curb crime, in­clud­ing stronger penal­ties, com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes, and ed­u­ca­tion­al re­forms.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day as the coun­try’s mur­der count reached 500, Don­na Narace of Debe rec­om­mend­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of boot camps for chil­dren to learn val­ues and avoid be­ing lured in­to gang cul­ture.

“One of the so­lu­tions is im­ple­ment­ing boot camps in Trinidad and To­ba­go, trained by mil­i­tary per­son­nel in schools,” Narace said.

Kavin­dra Sawh, a res­i­dent of Ch­agua­nas, called for stricter laws and more po­lice pa­trols.

“We need stricter penal­ties so when some­one com­mits a crime, they’ll be afraid to do it again. We al­so need a lit­tle more pa­trols,” Sawh said.

Jo­mo Ben­jamin of Mara­bel­la stressed the need for spread­ing pos­i­tiv­i­ty in com­mu­ni­ties as a so­lu­tion to crime.

“When peo­ple are sur­round­ed by pos­i­tiv­i­ty, they’ll want to be part of some­thing good and won’t turn to crime or sell­ing drugs,” Ben­jamin said.

And Maria Sinanan of Bar­rack­pore who en­dured the or­deal of a home in­va­sion, ad­vo­cat­ed for crim­i­nals to stay in jail longer. “We need more jail time.”

Vikash Goin­da, an in­struc­tor, urged the de­vel­op­ment of younger minds through dis­ci­pline to cre­ate a bet­ter fu­ture.

“I would start with younger minds, de­vel­op them with more dis­ci­pline and peace. Push the kids to cre­ate a bet­ter gen­er­a­tion for the fu­ture,” Goin­da said.

Vin­dra Ramjit pro­posed that home­own­ers should be armed to pro­tect them­selves from crim­i­nals.

“Give every­one who owns a house a big­ger gun than the thieves,” Ramjit sug­gest­ed.

Re­cent­ly, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar said crime has im­pact­ed the safe­ty and well-be­ing of com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in North Trinidad where peo­ple face at­tacks from gangs, while in South and Cen­tral Trinidad, 70 per cent of all mur­ders stemmed from do­mes­tic dis­putes.