JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

With a record high of 614 mur­ders up to yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is up­set that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has not been able to do more the curb the ris­ing rate of se­ri­ous crime and mur­ders in par­tic­u­lar, a sit­u­a­tion he has de­scribed as to­tal­ly “un­ac­cept­able.”

In a state­ment post­ed on the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Face­book page on Thurs­day night, Dr Row­ley said he hoped and had a “gen­uine ex­pec­ta­tion” that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ef­forts would have seen a vis­i­ble re­duc­tion in num­ber of mur­ders and vi­o­lent crime by now.

“The un­ac­cept­able high lev­el of vi­o­lent crime in the coun­try has at­tract­ed the con­sis­tent at­ten­tion and not in­con­sid­er­able re­sources of the state,” the PM said.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, even the sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, have not de­terred the crim­i­nal minds which op­er­ate, as though, with­out fear of de­tec­tion and cer­tain­ty of time­ly, dis­suad­ing pun­ish­ment.

“I am very dis­ap­point­ed in the out­turn where once again in this small na­tion, fre­quent killings see us, for the sec­ond year straight, record­ing over 600 deaths at­trib­uted to wide­spread vi­o­lence. As much as the po­lice has done, they are re­quired to do much more if the stat­ed ob­jec­tives are to be at­tained.”

Row­ley was echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of his Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land, who, on Christ­mas Day, said po­lice, and him­self can do a bet­ter job at ad­dress­ing crime.

“My ad­vice for the po­lice, would be to work hard­er and I take my own ad­vice al­so. The plans are there, I think we need a more ro­bust im­ple­men­ta­tion of the plan,” Scot­land said then.

In a me­dia re­lease on Mon­day night, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so said the 600-plus mur­ders had erod­ed “a sig­nif­i­cant­ly large amount of good work” done by the po­lice.

She said un­til the minds of crim­i­nals can be per­suad­ed to change their be­hav­iour, this will re­main a chal­lenge as crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to com­mit vi­o­lent crimes.

In his post, Row­ley again said his Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces with the tools they need to stop the cur­rent crime surge.

“The Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to pro­vide full sup­port to the po­lice and oth­er agen­cies and en­cour­ages all stake­hold­ers from the home to the cour­t­house to pro­vide no safe har­bour and com­fort to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment which be­lieves that it can plan, ex­e­cute and ter­rorise the na­tion with im­puni­ty,” he said.

“To get the bet­ter of the wide­spread crim­i­nal con­duct, we need to do more at the state lev­el in all ar­eas, just as we call on house­holds of in­ter­est to get in­volved in do­ing more to in­crease the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty we all so des­per­ate­ly need.”

How­ev­er, he ap­pealed to the po­lice to “make the crim­i­nals un­com­fort­able with pen­e­trat­ing de­tec­tion meth­ods.”

To cit­i­zens, he ap­pealed, “To those who know and are do­ing or say­ing noth­ing, stop nor­mal­is­ing crim­i­nal con­duct in your so­cial life and to those who share the pro­ceeds of vi­o­lent crim­i­nal con­duct, stop en­cour­ag­ing or shield­ing your fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends who are en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal con­duct.

“To those in au­thor­i­ty who are re­spon­si­ble for dis­pens­ing jus­tice, stop pre­tend­ing that crim­i­nals are the vic­tims who de­serve on­ly mer­cy when by their heart­less, law­less be­hav­iour, they are to re­ceive firm pun­ish­ment as pre­scribed by the law as en­act­ed in an­tic­i­pa­tion to cov­er the var­i­ous desta­bil­is­ing prac­tices.”

He again re­it­er­at­ed that Gov­ern­ment would not give up hope.

“The Gov­ern­ment does not be­lieve that we as a na­tion can­not get the up­per hand of crim­i­nal con­duct which has evolved to be­com­ing a ma­jor pub­lic health is­sue at this time but we will all need to do more and even do dif­fer­ent­ly if we are to keep vi­o­lent crim­i­nal con­duct where it be­longs,” he said.

Stake­hold­ers say Govt not se­ri­ous

Sev­er­al stake­hold­ers yes­ter­day ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of be­ing too afraid to take the re­al steps need­ed to deal with the crime scourge.

Ear­li­er this week, crim­i­nol­o­gists Dr Randy Seep­er­sad and Dau­rius Figueira said politi­cians were afraid of los­ing po­lit­i­cal points so they will not do what is nec­es­sary. Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah al­so said po­lice need to im­plore an “in-your-face” tac­tic to halt those in­volved in crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, out­spo­ken pas­tor Clive Dot­tin said if he was in charge, he would have called for a state of emer­gency and in­creased joint po­lice and army pa­trols. He said to fix crime, there must be some mea­sure of dis­com­fort to cit­i­zens.

“This coun­try has got to agree to go through a sus­tained pe­ri­od of dis­com­fort in or­der to deal with this is­sue. Sac­ri­fice the bloody car­ni­val! You could imag­ine if gangs in­vade car­ni­val bands what will hap­pen? Can you imag­ine that?”

Dot­tin said the coun­try does not want to ad­dress crime but ex­pects to re­duce the mur­der toll.

Not­ing both Scot­land and Fitzger­ald Hinds were min­is­ters in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and there is still a record high mur­der toll, he said “we’re do­ing some­thing wrong” but not­ed we must ad­mit to this ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress vi­o­lent crime.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the is­sue, In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) head Dr El­lis Bur­ris told Guardian Me­dia that to fix crime, the coun­try must re­turn to its spir­i­tu­al val­ues.

“The cor­ro­sion of un­god­li­ness is eat­ing deep in­to the so­ci­ety. And there­fore, the crimes that are ex­ist­ing is due to un­god­li­ness and peo­ple try­ing to be self­ish, try­ing to en­sure that they pull things in for them­selves or grab things for their own. But the more we pray, the less self­ish we will be­come.”

He added that the IRO stands ready to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment in any way pos­si­ble to ad­dress crime. Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said fight­ing crime is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort but the arms of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty have been op­er­at­ing in iso­la­tion.

“For years, the arms of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem have been op­er­at­ing in si­los. And we put all this pres­sure on the po­lice, the po­lice, the po­lice and on top of that, they get a huge chunk of the bud­get as it re­lates to polic­ing. But we some­how missed the point in re­al­is­ing that to have any re­al im­pact on crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, we have to af­fect the lives of the pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in a pos­i­tive way,” he said.

Gor­don said the coun­try can­not af­ford to lose hope and must re­turn to the first in­sti­tu­tion, that be­ing the fam­i­ly, to solve crime. He said the ef­forts must be ap­plied dif­fer­ent­ly.

Mean­while, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan SC came to the de­fence of the ju­di­cia­ry, say­ing Prime Min­is­ter was not ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the over­all sit­u­a­tion with crime in the coun­try.

“He blamed the po­lice, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the po­lice ser­vice for not do­ing suf­fi­cient­ly enough to con­trol and abate crimes. He blamed the rel­a­tives of the crim­i­nals for not re­veal­ing their iden­ti­ties or sur­ren­der­ing them to the po­lice. He blamed the ju­di­cia­ry for not ex­act­ing se­vere pun­ish­ment for the cri­sis of crime. He is blam­ing every­body but him­self,” Khan said.

Khan said the Prime Min­is­ter seemed more con­cerned with re­main­ing in of­fice but was not re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in solv­ing crime.

“The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said it is not his du­ty to solve the prob­lem of crimes. That is the du­ty of the po­lice. They are act­ing like if the po­lice is the gov­ern­ment of the day and not them­selves. I am of the view that the Prime Min­is­ter is ei­ther in­ept, he is not equipped, he is not in a po­si­tion to re­al­ly solve the crime, or he does not care.”

In a What­sApp re­sponse, shad­ow min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment did not just re­treat but have sur­ren­dered to the crim­i­nals. He said while ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment on­ly in the high mur­ders, Dr Row­ley made no com­mit­ment to a new strate­gic ap­proach ad­dress­ing crime. He called for the re­moval of both Hinds and Hare­wood-Christo­pher from the helm of the crime-fight­ing ap­pa­ra­tus.