Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was speak­ing to an au­di­ence that had al­ready left the au­di­to­ri­um when she de­clared we are “safer now.”

To be clear, the cit­i­zen­ry is the on­ly group that should make such a de­c­la­ra­tion. We are safer when we feel and say we are safer. No amount of pos­i­tive re­in­force­ment, rep­e­ti­tion fre­quen­cy or des­per­ate cling­ing to slight shifts in crime sta­tis­tics over short pe­ri­ods would make T&T safer or feel safer.

In May 2025, peo­ple may have been more hope­ful and even will­ing to be­lieve it when the PM as­sured us that there would be a “marked de­cline in crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty” with­in six months of her ad­min­is­tra­tion.

This, de­spite my scep­ti­cism and knowl­edge of crim­i­nal­i­ty, which keeps our pop­u­la­tion anx­i­ety per­pet­u­al­ly el­e­vat­ed here, was met with hope. For me, a de­cline in crime is an ab­solute ben­e­fit to this coun­try, the re­gion and the world. So, if this were to be ac­com­plished, I would con­sid­er it an “every­body-wins” sce­nario.

In Au­gust 2025, mark­ing 100 days in of­fice, in a Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Cou­va, the PM again as­sert­ed that “T&T is a safer place to­day be­cause of the ac­tions tak­en by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment in its first 100 days in of­fice.”

“The ques­tion you ask is the on­ly one that mat­ters: Are you safer to­day? And that an­swer has to be yes,” she said.

She said the da­ta then showed a 34 per cent re­duc­tion in homi­cides.

And when we had passed that six-month pe­ri­od, the promise made at her swear­ing-in to make us “hap­pi­er and safer” felt like mak­ing vows at an al­tar where the groom failed to show up.

In No­vem­ber/De­cem­ber, we re­called that the US mil­i­tary radar in To­ba­go al­so prompt­ed talks about our safe­ty. The Prime Min­is­ter tried to calm the fren­zied re­spons­es of the cit­i­zen­ry by telling us, “the sys­tem will make both the sis­ter is­land, and Trinidad, safer.”

She was quot­ed as say­ing, “To­ba­go’s air and sea ter­ri­to­ry are the most se­cure they have ever been, and the peo­ple of To­ba­go are the safest they have ever been. I am ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for their safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and will en­sure they nev­er have a bloody year like 2024,”

In­sist­ing the radar had noth­ing to do with the US’s is­sue with Venezuela, we were al­so told by the PM that the radar was there at her re­quest “as a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion for our poor sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties.” And “a sys­tem will al­so be in­stalled at a site in Trinidad un­til a per­ma­nent re­place­ment for our in­ef­fec­tive ex­ist­ing radar sys­tem can be in­stalled.”

In March, the radar was re­moved, and the PM told us, “The re­moval of the Unit­ed States-in­stalled radar in To­ba­go should not come as a sur­prise,” and re­mind­ed us that the equip­ment was al­ways “in­tend­ed to be tem­po­rary.” That was two months af­ter Venezuela’s pres­i­dent was kid­napped and tak­en in­to US fed­er­al de­ten­tion.

To­day, I in­tend­ed to speak about death by sui­cide and its ef­fect on peo­ple. I have done this top­ic at least once every year in my 14 years of writ­ing about men­tal health, but the re­ac­tions to re­cent in­ci­dents re­mind­ed me that it is a mes­sage that needs re­peat­ing.

I ti­tled the in­stal­ment “We can nev­er get used to death” with­out hav­ing a clue as to what this past week would have brought. De­spite hav­ing lim­it­ed me­dia and so­cial me­dia ex­po­sure, the grue­some­ness of the deaths record­ed in the past week was suf­fi­cient­ly high to reg­is­ter its way in­to my con­scious­ness.

Yes­ter­day’s head­line here said, “7 killed in 3 days” and that in­clud­ed act­ing cor­po­ral Anusha Ever­s­ley, stran­gled and beat­en while on du­ty in a po­lice sta­tion. Over the week­end, Bar­ba­dos’ gov­ern­ment “strong­ly con­demned” an out­break of vi­o­lence in which three peo­ple were killed in Bridgetown, while in the US, a man killed eight chil­dren, sev­en of whom he fa­thered, and shot two women—his es­tranged wife and his cur­rent girl­friend—both of whom are now hos­pi­talised.

Last week, I ad­dressed the vac­u­ous re­sponse by the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to the mark­ing of T&T’s 100 mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and April 11. Look­ing at the sta­tis­tics over the past ten years, I al­so an­tic­i­pat­ed that some­one would feel the need to de­clare T&T safer.

I knew in­stinc­tive­ly that a boast about crime rates in T&T was im­mi­nent. So, last week, I wrote, “The trend or im­proved tra­jec­to­ry does not cap­ture my lived re­al­i­ty, so I am al­ways un­der­whelmed by which year or which ad­min­is­tra­tion “is en­joy­ing” or “has pro­duced” low­er rates of crime.

“The minute dif­fer­ences in the es­ca­la­tion of crime here of­fer slight psy­cho­log­i­cal re­lief... We will con­tin­ue to live in a state with no true ex­pe­ri­ence of se­cu­ri­ty un­til our high crime base­line con­sis­tent­ly low­ers over a pe­ri­od of years,” I said.

It is disin­gen­u­ous to pro­claim we are safer since we have spent about 75 per cent of the last year in a State of Emer­gency and death and blood are con­stant­ly in our head­lines.

My deep­est con­do­lences to all the fam­i­lies who mourn. May your loved ones find peace­ful rest. And may we, who live, find peace.