The per­va­sive­ness of the crime sit­u­a­tion, and par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders to­day, per­suades us once again that the Gov­ern­ment has no idea of how to con­trol the mess that we have found our­selves in.

Here we are again, as we have done so many times be­fore, us­ing this space to echo the lev­el of hope­less­ness that the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion feels now and a lack of con­fi­dence in the as­sur­ances be­ing giv­en by the au­thor­i­ties.

Why, for ex­am­ple, does act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob be­lieve the coun­try needs to be told what we al­ready know, in the wake of Sat­ur­day morn­ing's shoot­ing at The Res­i­dence in One Wood­brook Place?

He tells us the prob­lem is the num­ber of guns in the hands of crim­i­nals, and more so, high-pow­ered weapons like AK-47s and AR-15s. As he prof­fered in his state­ment to the me­dia, these types of weapons can give youths around 17 years the feel­ing they are men who can take on any­one.

Hav­ing stat­ed the ob­vi­ous for the umpteenth time, we ask Mr Ja­cob once again, what are you do­ing about it?

The fact is, we, like the rest of the coun­try, do not care to hear about the caus­es of these sense­less killings. We are dis­tressed that the ac­tions to solve them speak much soft­er than words.

Some 346 peo­ple who were alive at the be­gin­ning of the year are dead to­day at the hands of mur­der­ers, with 20 dou­ble mur­ders and three triple homi­cides ac­count­ing for some. Hard­ly a day now pass­es with­out the mur­der count climb­ing by more than one.

We are al­so baf­fled that the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er could sug­gest that the Bail Bill, hav­ing be­come de­funct on Au­gust 3, might be part of the cur­rent prob­lem by mak­ing crim­i­nals more em­pow­ered, giv­en their chances of get­ting bail for gun crimes are now bet­ter.

What, may we ask, had been em­pow­er­ing them long be­fore this bill ex­pired? Fur­ther­more, de­tec­tion and ar­rests are so abysmal­ly low, the mat­ter of bail is al­most a moot point to­day.

Ja­cob aside, the Gov­ern­ment has been do­ing very lit­tle to in­spire con­fi­dence in the pop­u­la­tion and must re­alise by now that few peo­ple be­lieve them any­more on the is­sue of crime re­duc­tion.

There have been no ef­forts to ad­dress the gun and drug prob­lems and to se­ri­ous­ly deal with gangs in op­er­a­tion for years.

The fact that the Prime Min­is­ter does not seem to re­alise that his Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has failed to im­prove the sit­u­a­tion or, at the very least, in­spire con­fi­dence that he can, is an in­dict­ment of him and of the Cab­i­net.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira opines that the rules among crim­i­nals have gone and that if this isn't re­versed quick­ly, T&T will en­ter in­to a state or an­ar­chy sim­i­lar to Haiti and Hon­duras.

"So­cial con­trol has col­lapsed. There is a tip­ping point in so­ci­eties and there's no go­ing back. I think Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ready reached that point," Figueira said.

To­day, we see very lit­tle to per­suade us that Figueira's opin­ion is wrong.

The Gov­ern­ment must know that to­day, it pre­sides over frus­trat­ed cit­i­zens seek­ing re­al lead­er­ship amid cri­sis, but who are more mind­ed to be­lieve that the next head­line will pro­nounce on fur­ther in­roads made by crim­i­nals, than the oth­er way around.