AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As Trin­bag­o­ni­ans con­tin­ue to grap­ple with a scorch­ing mur­der rate on both is­lands, one re­li­gious leader ad­mits that it is dif­fi­cult to fight crime when T&T is a “law­less, in­dis­ci­plined, and cor­rupt na­tion.”

For­mer mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor Clive Dot­tin made this com­ment in re­sponse to an­oth­er ‘bloody’ week­end that end­ed with 15 mur­ders.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Dot­tin ad­mit­ted that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) needs to in­crease their op­er­a­tions to com­bat the “well-oiled and en­gi­neered mafi­at­ic struc­ture” that plagues the na­tion.

“We’ve got to demon­strate to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments that we are se­ri­ous about con­fronting them, get­ting rid of them, and ar­rest­ing them. We had to in­crease our de­tec­tion rate. It’s abysmal­ly low,” Dot­tin said.

“That gang vi­o­lence—that’s not just young peo­ple who are just rest­less, you know. That’s a co­or­di­nat­ed, struc­tured, and pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach to re­cruit­ing young peo­ple who are teenagers in the gang busi­ness.”

As a pas­tor, Dot­tin said he agrees with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s call for prayer and di­vine in­ter­ven­tion as an an­ti-crime strat­e­gy. But he stressed that prayers shouldn’t be used as a “po­lit­i­cal foot­ball.”

The for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor ex­pressed his dis­plea­sure with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for re­ject­ing bi­par­ti­san­ship about crime-fight­ing ef­forts.

“I am still up­set that the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion have not met in a long time to dis­cuss the way for­ward,” Dot­tin said.

“They must have a joint press con­fer­ence to as­sure the coun­try that to­geth­er we as­pire, to­geth­er we achieve.”

But Dot­tin urged re­li­gious lead­ers to not be­come swamped in pol­i­tics and the oc­ca­sion­al “blame games,” but to di­rect their en­er­gy to­wards work­ing with youths, who he ad­mit­ted have been ne­glect­ed and ig­nored by so­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

“What I see with the young crim­i­nal el­e­ments is that many of them are grow­ing up love­less and God­less. They don’t have the fear of God in them at all. That is sig­nif­i­cant.”