It is a sad statistic to admit to, but already, this newspaper must dedicate space to the already alarming rate of murders at the start of the new year.
Five citizens have been killed for 2023, give or take the fact that some of them may have been murdered in 2022 but were only found on New Year's Day.
This suggests that the killers lurking within our midst will not be changing their modus operandi. Indeed, as they ended 2022, so they have begun 2023, and the one thing that remains evident is that they have no fear of either being caught or of feeling the full brunt of the law for their barbaric acts.
Last year’s bloodletting produced a record murder toll of 606, according to TTPS figures, 56 more than the previous 550 toll recorded in 2018.
As such, citizens will be eagerly waiting to hear National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds' plans for crime and, more importantly, how he intends to give the TTPS the tools it needs to eradicate the current crime scourge.
Mr Hinds' political life and, by extension, his Government's, may well depend on whether he has any feasible plan to deal with the problem. Citizens will recall that Mr Hinds admitted the majority of citizens wanted him to fail in his quest, and the majority of them also gave him a failing grade last year.
So, the real question every citizen has is when will relief come?
We have heard the rhetoric from several governments and police commissioners about taking the streets back from the criminal elements.
Of course, with that goal still elusive, John Public is now being asked to help more and more in this activity. Ultimately, though it is a question of a lack of trust in the TTPS, rotting in some key areas due to rogue officers, that prevents this cooperation from being sought. Re-engineering a relationship of trust and respect between the TTPS and the public should be acting Commissioner of Police McDonald Jacob's main goal in the weeks ahead then since there is no doubt it could be a game changer.
This is also why Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley's New Year’s Day speech, in which he has yet again promised to deal with the problem, rings so hollow to the citizenry.
Quite frankly, Mr Prime Minister, citizens have long been tired of the talk. What they want is action and, more importantly, they want the politicians, on both sides, to stop playing games with citizens' lives for once. Denying the passage of critical crime-fighting legislation, for example, is no trump card for the UNC, since, on the last check, both they and the PNM have failed on crime fighting.
No one wants to see us cross the 600-murder threshold at the end of 2023. At the startling rate with which murders have begun, however, and with no end to the political tomfoolery in sight, we may be waiting in vain. We hope this will not be so. But to win this war, the politicians must cooperate on crime-fighting initiatives.