The ma­jor dis­cov­ery of a large cache of arms and am­mu­ni­tion made by po­lice and Cus­toms of­fi­cers at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is ev­i­dence that crim­i­nal el­e­ments are still de­ter­mined to car­ry out their ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, hop­ing that COVID-19 will pro­vide a suf­fi­cient dis­trac­tion to cov­er their tracks.

Yes­ter­day’s find, along with the drug bust in the Gulf of Paria the day be­fore, un­der­scores the need for con­tin­ued vig­i­lance by law en­force­ment, es­pe­cial­ly at this coun­try’s ports of en­try.

The re­cent rev­e­la­tion by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that se­ri­ous crime is down, sup­port­ed by ro­bust sta­tis­tics, is wel­comed news. This, in ad­di­tion to the num­ber of il­le­gal guns tak­en off the streets last year in­to this year by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the soon to come Ma­rine Unit, are some pos­i­tive steps in eas­ing the fear of crime from cit­i­zens’ minds.

But in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of law en­force­ment must recog­nise the im­por­tant role they each have to play and must be on the same page with the Com­mis­sion­er and their re­spec­tive se­niors when it comes to plans to up­hold the law - in what­ev­er form it may come.

Con­cerns by the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion about the health and safe­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers, now tasked with en­sur­ing COVID-19 law­break­ers are brought to jus­tice is un­der­stand­able but should not serve as a de­ter­rent to en­forc­ing their vig­or­ous pur­suit of en­force­ment of the law.

Cas­es of the virus are now back in triple dig­its and the high­ly-trans­mis­si­ble Brazil vari­ant (P1) is spread­ing, with a to­tal of four cas­es in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties around the coun­try. It re­mains clear that some cit­i­zens can­not be count­ed on to ex­er­cise per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and their choice to flout the health reg­u­la­tions should re­sult in the ap­pro­pri­ate con­se­quences.

The time is ripe for those called to ac­tion to do so and not shirk their du­ties. It is al­so not the time to politi­cise this coun­try’s COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion or crime.

The move by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to put their spin on an ad­vi­so­ry is­sued by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca about trav­el to this coun­try, must not on­ly be frowned up­on but should be con­demned.

The US ad­vi­so­ry cau­tioned trav­el to a to­tal of 115 coun­tries be­cause of the spread of coro­n­avirus and al­so cau­tioned about crime and ad­vised US cit­i­zens against ven­tur­ing in­to some ar­eas. Trinidad and To­ba­go was among those coun­tries list­ed.

The UNC’s un­bri­dled at­tempt to twist the in­for­ma­tion to crit­i­cise the Gov­ern­ment was of course de­nounced by the Em­bassy, which not­ed such mis­sives have been a cus­tom­ary prac­tice for years.

The COVID fight for this coun­try is far from over and de­spite the start of the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme, there is much ground to cov­er be­fore the bat­tle is won.

We would do well as a na­tion to not add an­oth­er boul­der in the bag of woes we car­ry and to re­main vig­i­lant for those who seek to use the preva­lence of COVID for their own de­vices.