Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Kei­th Scot­land, says both he and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher must step up their ef­forts to tack­le the ris­ing mur­der rate and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes.

At the open­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court’s new law term yes­ter­day, Scot­land was asked if he was sat­is­fied with the top cop’s ap­proach to crime-fight­ing.

While Scot­land be­lieves she is “do­ing her best”, he em­pha­sised that Hare­wood-Christo­pher must adopt a tougher stance on crime.

“I would say that the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er is do­ing her best to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion. There’s al­ways room for im­prove­ment and we re­quest, re­spect­ful­ly, im­prove­ment on all parts even from my­self, even though I’m just two months in the job, I think I could im­prove. I want to get more done,” he said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher has faced crit­i­cism over the ris­ing mur­der count, which has reached 446 so far this year, com­pared to 425 last year. How­ev­er, she has re­port­ed progress in re­duc­ing oth­er se­ri­ous of­fences.

In re­sponse to In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent Heather Seale’s con­cerns about the im­pact of crime on the work­force and busi­ness own­ers, Scot­land as­sured that he would not ig­nore these is­sues.

“I’m not go­ing to bury my head in the sand and say it’s not an is­sue that needs to be ad­dressed. It needs to be ad­dressed and I’m ad­dress­ing it as we speak,” Scot­land said. He al­so urged young peo­ple in­volved in crime to take ad­van­tage of gov­ern­ment pro­grammes, such as the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing Pro­gramme (Mi­LAT) to cre­ate bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves and im­prove their lives.

“I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty again to say to those in Trinidad and To­ba­go who are bent on tak­ing us down a path, I say to them to stop it, just, con­duct your­selves. There are things, there are pro­grammes that are there for young peo­ple. Ac­cess those pro­grammes.”

Scot­land sug­gest­ed that there has been ex­ces­sive dis­cus­sion about the im­pact of crime and em­pha­sised that the time has come for de­ci­sive ac­tion.