KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Two crim­i­nol­o­gists say they agree with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s call for cit­i­zens to help the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) by shar­ing per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion through anony­mous chan­nels, but main­tain the pub­lic’s re­sponse is on­ly part of the so­lu­tion to the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try.

In a state­ment on Face­book con­demn­ing the bru­tal mur­ders of four men in Gon­za­les and at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) on Sun­day, Dr Row­ley called for so­ci­ety to re­view its re­la­tion­ship with crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“It goes with­out say­ing that the ef­fec­tive­ness of polic­ing will be con­sid­er­ably im­proved if cit­i­zens share per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion through the many anony­mous chan­nels. The ex­pect­ed swift pro­cess­ing in the court sys­tem, in­stead of man­aged au­to­mat­ic de­lays, will help to close the re­volv­ing doors oiled by the many rights that are con­stant­ly be­ing abused by per­sons who show no con­cern for the rights of the ma­jor­i­ty who are con­stant­ly preyed on,” Row­ley said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, co-or­di­na­tor of the Crim­i­nol­o­gy Unit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, said Gov­ern­ment should start think­ing of cre­ative ways to help boost re­sources for the TTPS, as this is a ma­jor prob­lem. He al­so not­ed that pub­lic con­fi­dence in the TTPS is very low and peo­ple might be hes­i­tant to re­port any­thing to the po­lice for fear of be­ing tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

“There is a lot of dis­trust and I’m not say­ing by and large of­fi­cers are cor­rupt or any­thing but there’s al­ways been al­le­ga­tions of po­lice cor­rup­tion, there’s al­ways been al­le­ga­tions of po­lice col­lab­o­rat­ing with crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” Seep­er­sad said.

“Things do have to be put in place be­fore the pub­lic is con­fi­dent and safe enough to re­port to the po­lice but it’s not on­ly about the pub­lic’s lev­el of con­fi­dence and trust in the po­lice, it’s al­so about the pub­lic’s feel­ings con­cern­ing the po­lice or the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to pro­tect them. The re­al­i­ty is if that pro­tec­tion is not there, and the low de­tec­tion rates sug­gest that it isn’t, it means that if you go and you re­port on a crim­i­nal, or you re­port on a gang, chances are you will be tar­get­ed and there is very lit­tle that could prob­a­bly be done to pro­tect you from that.”

He said while re­port­ing will go a long way to­wards solv­ing crime, there is still too much that isn’t be­ing done. He sug­gest­ed the Gov­ern­ment start look­ing at the count­less rec­om­men­da­tions made by var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to re­vamp the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and im­prove the prison sys­tem. He said some of these rec­om­men­da­tions can help the TTPS and prison ser­vice.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figuera said the Gov­ern­ment isn’t fo­cus­ing on the re­al is­sues con­tribut­ing to crime.

Re­spond­ing to Row­ley’s state­ments, he asked, “Are you con­vict­ing the en­tire pop­u­la­tion and blam­ing us for the es­ca­la­tion in vi­o­lence be­cause we are not will­ing to come for­ward and un­der­go a long and tor­tur­ous process of hav­ing to wait years un­til a case is called?

“Every­body knows who are the wit­ness­es and how will we live through a case that takes 15 years to call when those we are wit­ness­ing against have the means to elim­i­nate us and our fam­i­ly with im­puni­ty? That is the ques­tion back to the politi­cians.”

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds ex­pressed con­cern about the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age and neg­a­tive in­flu­ences from the re­cent trend of in­ter­na­tion­al YouTu­bers high­light­ing gang cul­ture in the coun­try.

Hinds said, “I am con­cerned when peo­ple act in ways or do any­thing or say any­thing to the detri­ment to the rep­u­ta­tion of the na­tion and as a min­is­ter, I know what that means in a di­rect way be­cause I in­ter­face with our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.”

He added that T&T had earned a rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing a ma­jor ex­porter of ter­ror­ist fight­ers dur­ing the hey­day of ISIS.

How­ev­er, Figuera said the YouTu­bers are not the ones to blame, as they are on­ly con­cerned about get­ting ma­te­r­i­al to in­crease their views and likes on their so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

He said na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty should fo­cus on stop­ping the in­flux of guns and am­mu­ni­tion and end­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty, so the coun­try would no longer have “ma­te­r­i­al” to show­case.

“What we need to talk about first is what is dri­ving the vi­o­lence. And we’re not talk­ing about that at all. All we could talk about is gang, gang, gang, gang, gang, like if the gangs fell from the sky al­ready formed. In oth­er words, it’s time to get re­al,” Figuera said.

“The YouTu­bers are com­ing to Trinidad be­cause the YouTu­bers are seek­ing ma­te­r­i­al that they will post that will get them clicks and fol­low­ers. So then the ques­tion is not the YouTu­bers com­ing to us but we pre­sent­ing ma­te­r­i­al to the YouTu­bers that is vi­tal to their en­ter­prise be­cause it is an en­ter­prise they are run­ning.

“It’s not about peo­ple com­ing to high­light our re­al­i­ty, the ques­tion is what are do­ing about that re­al­i­ty which we are fail­ing to con­trol since the An­ti-Gang Act was passed.”

Figuera said what was dri­ving the vi­o­lence is the change in the en­vi­ron­ment of il­lic­it trade since 2017.