It was just af­ter mid­day on Ju­ly 14 when a wa­ter ven­dor was shot in the head on Broad­way in Port-of-Spain, in clear view of many mak­ing their way in and around the cap­i­tal city.

Two weeks lat­er, a man was shot dead and three oth­ers wound­ed one af­ter­noon dur­ing the month-end rush on the cor­ners of Queen and George Streets.

One of the vic­tims, a ven­dor, was shot in the leg and hand and is still hos­pi­talised.

More re­cent­ly, last Sat­ur­day, gun­men opened fire on three men at The Res­i­dence night­club in Wood­brook, a pop­u­lar week­end par­ty spot. It is just a feet away from the Po­lice Acad­e­my.

Brazen killings like these have left many in the pop­u­la­tion feel­ing un­safe not on­ly in the cap­i­tal city but across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“You see where I is, if I on­ly hear bow (gun­shot sound) I could run through here,” one woman said as she limed at a rum shop at the cor­ner of George and Queen Streets yes­ter­day.

“I don’t feel safe any­where,” Eva said while walk­ing in Port-of-Spain.

“I want to get some­thing, I come in town and I go back home,” Sylvester Richards added.

They said crim­i­nals just don’t care about the po­lice, wit­ness­es, or even po­ten­tial vic­tims.

“If the law is not be­ing en­forced, crim­i­nals are aware of that and they will do a lot of stuff that they know they could do and get away with it,” Fred­er­ick Street ven­dor San­jay said.

“The crim­i­nals free, they could do what they want be­cause them rid­ing the sys­tem too,” an­oth­er woman added.

Ac­cord­ing to Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, com­bat­ing crime is not on­ly the po­lice’s job but he said they are do­ing their best.

“We al­ways look at what the po­lice is do­ing now. What the po­lice is do­ing now is to en­sure to in­crease our pres­ence. We are do­ing pa­trols to de­crease our re­sponse time so that we can, in fact, in­ves­ti­gate mat­ters more ef­fec­tive­ly, we can be ready to go to court when mat­ters oc­cur.

“We are do­ing the hard law en­force­ment and we do­ing a lot of the com­mu­ni­ty work, try­ing to en­sure that the gangs can­not re­cruit young peo­ple,” he ex­plained.

Ja­cob said any­time the main fo­cus is on­ly on what po­lice are do­ing, the coun­try will lose its bat­tle against the crim­i­nals.

Guns em­pow­er crim­i­nals

How­ev­er, the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er said one of the rea­sons for the bold­ness of and de­scent in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty could be the psy­chol­o­gy of firearm pos­ses­sion.

He ex­plained that this is when an in­di­vid­ual has a dead­ly weapon like a sub­ma­chine gun, AR-15 or an AK-47 in his hands. Ja­cob said he may be trained to use it but he’s not trained like a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer on how to man­age it.

“It takes a young man, who may be a child, make him feel like he’s a man...They may be of the opin­ion that they can take on any­one be­cause of that weapon in his hand,” Ja­cob said.

He said the type of weapons the crim­i­nals have in their pos­ses­sion em­pow­ers them and he blames this on the rapid in­crease in guns en­ter­ing this coun­try.

“When they hold this weapon, they feel now that they are a gi­ant, they are in­vin­ci­ble, our da­ta have shown that a lot of these high-pow­ered weapons, il­le­gal ones from when we trace it, is com­ing from North Amer­i­ca,” he said.

Ja­cob said these ar­eas are Mi­a­mi, Texas and Bal­ti­more. He said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has tak­en 392 weapons off the streets for the year so far and 60 were high-pow­ered guns.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo agreed with the act­ing com­mis­sion­er’s state­ment about the psy­chol­o­gy of guns. She said firearms are an or­der of su­pe­ri­or­i­ty in the crim­i­nal world, where it’s eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

“Guns and firearms have made young peo­ple feel like if some­thing hap­pens to me I can pro­tect my­self with a gun,” she said, adding she was told this when she toured de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties.

How­ev­er, Dr Nep­tune-Fi­garo be­lieves a lot of the weapons al­so come from Venezuela.

“What I don’t like is that guns have be­come such a norm and we haven’t been able to de­crease the num­ber of guns cir­cu­lat­ing in our pop­u­la­tion,” she added.

Guardian Me­dia asked a “com­mu­ni­ty leader,” who we will not iden­ti­fy, where the guns are com­ing from. His re­sponse was “places that they trust, the places that the Gov­ern­ment trust.”

He said the po­lice’s aim is to get all the guns off the streets but he said that can­not hap­pen.

“If a per­son lost a gun to­day, they can get an­oth­er one to­mor­row,” he added.

Uptick in brazen killings?

Ja­cob said the brazen killings are not new and have been hap­pen­ing in the last few years. He at­trib­uted the footage many have seen on so­cial me­dia to more cit­i­zens in­stalling cam­eras to pro­tect them­selves.

Ja­cob said this has be­come the case since in the last five years, the mur­der count has been above 350 an­nu­al­ly, which is the num­ber of mur­ders for 2022 so far.

In 2017, there were 495 mur­ders, in 2018 - 517; in 2019 - 536; in 2020 - 393 and in 2021, 448 peo­ple were killed.

“Be­cause of the in­crease in sit­u­a­tion­al crime pre­ven­tion mea­sures, which one is CCTV be­ing placed by pri­vate cit­i­zens, a lot of these things are be­ing picked up and put on so­cial me­dia,” Ja­cob said.

Ja­cob en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue tak­ing these mea­sures. An­oth­er fac­tor be­hind the bold­ness of crim­i­nals, the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er said, could be the fail­ing of the Bail Amend­ment Bill, or the fact that all mur­der ac­cused can now seek bail.

“There is no study done up to this point to see how the per­sons in­volved in crime feel about that,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ja­cob added that bail for mur­der has in­di­rect­ly weak­ened the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme and the po­lice have to make ad­just­ments so peo­ple can feel safe com­ing for­ward.

Dr Nep­tune-Fi­garo said she has not done the re­search to de­ter­mine if there has been an in­crease in brazen killings but said it has spread ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly.

“We are more aware of it,” she said.

‘No de­ter­rent in

the jus­tice sys­tem’

An­oth­er el­e­ment to the bold killings be­ing seen in T&T for some is the lack of de­ter­rence by the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to at­tor­ney Lee Mer­ry, the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is in “com­plete sham­bles.”

Mer­ry said there is a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty when it comes to all play­ers in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

“None of the play­ers in the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Sys­tem are made to ac­count for their per­for­mance, nor are they made to ac­count when mis­deeds are com­mit­ted,” he said.

He said po­lice of­fi­cers fail to ap­pear in court and he even ques­tioned the work rate of mag­is­trates and judges. Mer­ry said on­ly by mea­sur­ing these things will plans, poli­cies, and pro­ce­dures be made to try and in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy across the Ju­di­cial Sys­tem.

The com­mu­ni­ty leader sanc­tioned Mer­ry’s state­ments. He said the po­lice, lawyers, and oth­er com­po­nents of law en­force­ment need to be eth­i­cal.

“The coun­try have to come to­geth­er you can’t call me, you can’t call the peo­ple on the streets, you have to call peo­ple who in the ser­vice the law, the lawyers who rep­re­sent­ing these men if the lawyers stand up firm and say boy we not rep­re­sent­ing you when you get in trou­ble be­cause you on too much sh*t, you feel he go­ing and do what he do­ing,” he said.

Some quar­ters of the pop­u­la­tion has long since ques­tioned if the po­lice are part of the crime prob­lem in the coun­try. On­ly yes­ter­day, two po­lice of­fi­cers were held and charged for al­leged mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

For one for­mer pris­on­er, some rouge el­e­ments in the po­lice ser­vice con­tribute to the killings as well. When brazen mur­ders oc­cur there are some who ask ‘where were the po­lice?’

The ex-pris­on­er claimed there have been in­stances where of­fi­cers cleared the area for the crime to take place.

“The boss call the po­lice link he have...’Oh boss clear of that street nah, I wah make a pass’. Lat­er on or the next day that po­lice link go­ing and pass an check the boss gets lil mon­ey, laugh and talk about how it play off an then he back to work and try to kill the shoot­ers’ name who they say­ing do it,” he ex­plained.

The com­mu­ni­ty leader al­so spoke about cer­tain of­fi­cers drop­ping al­leged gang mem­bers in­to war­ring com­mu­ni­ties. The act­ing com­mis­sion­er quashed this the­o­ry, say­ing it is hard­ly like­ly since of­fi­cers have to give re­ports and if some­thing is found wrong in their ex­pla­na­tion they can be charged de­part­men­tal­ly, but ac­knowl­edged any­thing can hap­pen.

“I can­not doubt any­thing be­cause we are deal­ing with hu­man be­ings,” Ja­cob said.

A soft­er so­lu­tion to curb crime

But one thing the act­ing com­mis­sion­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist, at­tor­ney and com­mu­ni­ty leader all agreed on is that al­le­vi­at­ing crime can­not be done by hon­est of­fi­cers alone.

The com­mu­ni­ty leader said those in au­thor­i­ty should aim to help and up­lift peo­ple in de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties be­cause “guns don’t kill peo­ple, peo­ple kill peo­ple.”

He re­quest­ed a meet­ing with those in au­thor­i­ty to show the work he plans on do­ing with the young ones in his com­mu­ni­ty as he said not every­one in these de­pressed ar­eas en­cour­ages crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“The sys­tem have no way for a man to come out and change...that is how he is,” he said.

The com­mu­ni­ty leader said if the po­lice get to know the men­tal­i­ty of peo­ple in­volved in crime - see who wants change or im­prove or who wants war - then they can deal with them ac­cord­ing­ly.

The com­mu­ni­ty leader said ap­proach­ing them in a brash man­ner will not al­ter the sit­u­a­tion.

“If you want some­thing solved on the Beetham or Diego Mar­tin, if you want to qui­et a sit­u­a­tion in these com­mu­ni­ties you have to send 10,000 po­lice but it will on­ly take one man to stop every­thing,” he ex­plained.

He said if those in au­thor­i­ty con­tin­ue to give them box drains to build that’s what they will think they’re worth.

Dr Nep­tune-Fi­garo said that dur­ing her vis­it to a de­pressed com­mu­ni­ty re­cent­ly she learned that res­i­dents were af­fect­ed by ge­o­graph­ic and eco­nom­ic is­sues.

“What he ex­pressed you know with the bound­ary lines it gives them very lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties,” she said.

She said some of these res­i­dents don’t want to join gangs or com­mit crimes but there were no oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“When you come out of jail af­ter mur­der, where you get­ting work?” the com­mu­ni­ty leader asked.

The act­ing com­mis­sion­er not­ed that the po­lice had sev­er­al out­reach pro­grammes and Po­lice Youth Clubs to reach res­i­dents of these com­mu­ni­ties but Dr Nep­tune-Fi­garo said even when they learn a trade or a course they can­not ac­cess work.

“The po­lice can­not sole­ly re­solve that is­sue,” she said.

The com­mu­ni­ty leader, the CoP and the crim­i­nol­o­gist all be­lieve that curb­ing crime will take an all-hands-on-deck ap­proach.