T&T is in the midst of se­vere gun vi­o­lence, and ac­cord­ing to the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF), Mick­ela Pan­day, the au­thor­i­ties have re­fused to ac­knowl­edge it for what it is.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Pan­day sought to re­in­force just how neg­a­tive­ly the crime sit­u­a­tion had im­pact­ed the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al im­age. Claim­ing T&T had been ranked among the top 12 coun­tries glob­al­ly with the high­est num­ber of homi­cides, she said, “That is very un­ac­cept­able.”

An on­line search for the top ten coun­tries with the high­est crime rate in the world list­ed in no par­tic­u­lar or­der: Venezuela, Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, Haiti, South Africa, Hon­duras, T&T, Syr­ia, Yemen, and Ja­maica.

Pan­day de­clared, “There is a se­vere gun vi­o­lence cri­sis in T&T and we are not see­ing it.” She said the 15 killings that oc­curred on the week­end were ev­i­dence that the con­ver­sa­tion had to go a lit­tle bit fur­ther.

And even as she wel­comed the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) that se­cu­ri­ty forces would be mount­ing a co­or­di­nat­ed da­ta-dri­ven ap­proach in the crime fight go­ing for­ward, Pan­day knocked the au­thor­i­ties as she said, “Any re­sponse is a good re­sponse, be­cause there haven’t been very many com­ing out of those in au­thor­i­ty and those with the pow­er to do some­thing.”

Hope­ful that an in­creased pres­ence of of­fi­cers would be enough to act as a de­ter­rent in the in­ter­im, the PF head said the is­sue of where the il­le­gal guns were com­ing from is what of­fi­cials need­ed to ur­gent­ly ad­dress, as 90 per cent of the mur­ders had oc­curred through the use of these weapons. Re­fer­ring to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing on March 1, which fo­cused on vi­o­lence and il­le­gal guns, Pan­day said, “The re­port was so very damn­ing ... ba­si­cal­ly say­ing that noth­ing was hap­pen­ing, but we need to go back and say where are these il­le­gal guns are com­ing from and be­gin to ad­dress those is­sues.”

Claim­ing the coun­try’s porous bor­ders were fa­cil­i­tat­ing the in­flux of these il­le­gal weapons in­to the coun­try, Pan­day said the marked si­lence by na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials was an in­dict­ment on their part. She ques­tioned how many off­shore pa­trol ves­sels (OPV) were op­er­a­ble, and im­me­di­ate­ly claimed, “My be­lief is one.”

Pan­day fur­ther ques­tioned, “How can you pa­trol the bor­ders with one work­ing OPV? We know that peo­ple are traf­fick­ing in il­le­gal guns ... it is big busi­ness in this coun­try!”

She chal­lenged those in au­thor­i­ty to an­swer what was be­ing done to ad­dress these and oth­er ques­tions, ask­ing, “What are we do­ing about gang ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad?”

Call­ing for “big­ger con­ver­sa­tion” with those sit­ting in po­si­tions of pow­er and au­thor­i­ty, she said, “Not just a sim­ple plas­ter be­ing put on things to paci­fy peo­ple, be­cause peo­ple in this coun­try are ter­ri­fied for their lives.”

She said the ques­tion of where the hot spots were lo­cat­ed no longer ex­ist­ed, as Trinidad it­self was a hot spot. Cit­ing the mur­der of Caris­sa Ram­rat­tan on Ju­ly 13 at South Park, San Fer­nan­do, when she went to ser­vice her car, Pan­day said, “South Park isn’t a hot spot.”

She said she was hap­py with the promise of in­creased ac­tion from law en­force­ment, but was doubt­ful it would be enough. Pressed to say if the PF was suc­cess­ful in the next gen­er­al elec­tion and what would be their first or­der of busi­ness, Pan­day said the ap­proach to fight­ing crime had to be a holis­tic one that was proac­tive rather than re­ac­tive. She added that the caus­es of crime and gun vi­o­lence, along with the is­sue of porous bor­ders, all had to be close­ly ex­am­ined. She said, “There are sim­ple, sim­ple things that can be done.”

Pan­day said that in ad­di­tion to these ar­eas, ef­forts al­so need­ed to be made to ad­dress the so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors in­flu­enc­ing crime, the high lev­els of pover­ty, and the lack of em­ploy­ment and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties. She said while it was a good start to de­ploy more re­sources, oth­er ques­tions had arisen as to whether po­lice of­fi­cers had the req­ui­site re­sources to per­form their du­ties as re­quired.

Rais­ing the is­sue of cor­rup­tion in the pub­lic ser­vice, Pan­day said the JSC had found ev­i­dence that cor­rupt of­fi­cials with­in the TTPS, the Prison Ser­vice, and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion were aid­ing traf­fick­ers.

Re­veal­ing the star­tling find­ings, she said of the num­ber high­light­ed, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 97 per cent of those of­fi­cials iden­ti­fied had re­tained their jobs, which meant 184 per­sons were still ac­tive and on­ly six per­sons had been dis­missed with­out any charges be­ing brought against them. Re­new­ing her com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing law and or­der are re­stored if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, Pan­day added, “I think we ac­cept this ex­cuse of that’s the cul­ture and how it’s al­ways been, so let’s leave it like that.” She re­in­forced, how­ev­er, “But it ain’t work­ing, so it’s got to change and some­thing has to give, and it shouldn’t be the lives of the cit­i­zens of T&T.”

Pan­day ad­vised, “One of the most ba­sic func­tions of gov­ern­ment is to pro­tect its’ cit­i­zens, and if you can­not do that, you can­not do the job. Crime in this coun­try ben­e­fits very im­por­tant peo­ple, and there­fore, it has been al­lowed to con­tin­ue.” Pan­day re­vealed the PF had a com­piled a work­ing crime plan that they would be tak­ing to the coun­try, from which it would be built up­on in­cor­po­rat­ing sug­ges­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions from the pop­u­lace. This, she added, would be hand­ed over to the Prime Min­is­ter once com­plet­ed.

Pan­day said while she no longer felt safe in T&T, this was not lim­it­ed to her alone as the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a cer­tain lev­el of men­tal stress and anx­i­ety dai­ly as they nav­i­gate home, work and school.

“It is de­bil­i­tat­ing,” she end­ed.