The pub­lic mood is dark­en­ing as it be­comes ir­ri­ta­ble and fed up with the in­abil­i­ty to ar­rest the crime sit­u­a­tion. Crime is on a high and the Gov­ern­ment’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and pub­lic con­fi­dence are on the de­cline. It will be­come worse as we get clos­er to elec­tions. The mur­der rate is on course to meet or sur­pass 600 this year, and home in­va­sions ap­pear to be on the rise. De­viant, de­fi­ant young men proud­ly dis­play their weapons and boast of their will­ing­ness to use them in so­cial me­dia posts and in­ter­views. The Gov­ern­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and its agen­cies ap­pear un­able to ad­dress the tide of vi­o­lence.

Crime has a de­bil­i­tat­ing ef­fect on eco­nom­ic growth as it damp­ens busi­ness con­fi­dence and in­vest­ment. Why in­vest if pros­per­i­ty would at­tract kid­nap­pers or ex­tor­tion­ists? The re­port that crim­i­nals had il­le­gal­ly in­stalled sur­veil­lance cam­eras worth hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to mon­i­tor law en­force­ment agents in the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion was not mere­ly trou­bling. It demon­strat­ed that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment is now both re­source­ful and skilled. 

Who could steal uni­forms from the pres­ti­gious Guard and Emer­gency Branch? These de­vel­op­ments added fur­ther blem­ish­es to the pub­lic im­age of the TTPS. The SSA de­ba­cle adds in­sult to in­jury. Who will guard the guards?

There are dis­turb­ing de­vel­op­ments in the so­cial fab­ric. The re­peat­ed vi­o­lence in schools sig­nals that all is not well. Rot­ten ap­ples can spoil oth­ers. The ev­i­dence is that a gang cul­ture is preva­lent, and these gangs are in­volved in an ex­tor­tion rack­et amongst oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, “tax­ing” le­git­i­mate busi­ness in­ter­ests big and small. This is not a new de­vel­op­ment but has now be­come an epi­dem­ic. 

In­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors em­ployed to im­ple­ment pub­lic work projects con­stant­ly com­plain that they can­not op­er­ate un­less they ac­qui­esce to these ex­tor­tion de­mands. In the ab­sence of con­cert­ed ac­tion by the au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress this scourge, it will be­come en­dem­ic. One sus­pects that some of the mur­ders com­mit­ted are “lessons” for those re­luc­tant to pay up.

It would be fair to say that the reap­point­ment of the CoP did not gen­er­ate pub­lic en­thu­si­asm. The rea­sons ad­vanced for the de­ci­sion were spe­cious. Nev­er­the­less, the CoP has been reap­point­ed and de­serves our sup­port. To do oth­er­wise would not be in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try. But we can­not con­tin­ue with act­ing com­mis­sion­ers who do not have time to ei­ther de­vel­op medi­um-term goals or im­ple­ment them.

Crime is not a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem. It has be­come po­lit­i­cal be­cause of the fail­ure to ad­dress the is­sues with a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach. The Prime Min­is­ter and his cab­i­net col­leagues must un­der­stand this, even if the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter dodges re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter's pub­lic crit­i­cisms of the Ju­di­cia­ry in To­ba­go were un­help­ful. Pub­lic ar­gu­ments be­tween the AG and DPP, the CJ and DPP, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al are al­so not ac­cept­able. They are wor­ry­ing be­cause they are ev­i­dence of blame shift­ing and avoid­ance of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Crit­i­cis­ing in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions may play well for the po­lit­i­cal gallery but does not im­prove per­for­mance.

When he was leader of the Op­po­si­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter said that the Gov­ern­ment was part of the prob­lem if it could not deal with crime. Rather than com­plain­ing now, he has a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to show the elec­torate he knows the way for­ward.