Last week, four mem­bers of “The Tall Boots Crew” died “with their boots on”. This gang was no­to­ri­ous for its home in­va­sion spree in the cen­tral area. An­oth­er “crew” op­er­at­ing in the south lost one mem­ber, and two were ar­rest­ed. This is “per­for­mance” from the TTPS.

I have ob­served no sym­pa­thy for them from the cit­i­zen­ry af­ter they were “lit up”. Why should there be when these able-bod­ied men chose to wreak ter­ror on the vul­ner­a­ble? Did it ever oc­cur to them to wear their “tall boots” to plant and sell food?

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the TTPS on this re­duc­tion of evil. Can we hope that home in­va­sions have now end­ed? Gang war­fare in Bel­mont con­tin­ued, obliv­i­ous to good po­lice work else­where. Worse, it took the life of two-year-old Aki­ni Kafi, Aki­ni’s fa­ther, and an­oth­er per­son.

Please spare the chil­dren, at least! “Peo­ple” who hurt in­no­cent chil­dren de­serve no mer­cy. They are mon­sters, and some­times they are called ex­act­ly that: “Dat good, Mon­ster” and “yeah, you kill im, Big­gs, daiz de word” was heard on a video that showed the be­head­ing of a man in a forest­ed area. The Hunters Search and Res­cue Team sub­se­quent­ly found a sim­i­lar­ly mu­ti­lat­ed body in Ica­cos while search­ing for 38-year-old In­dar Ram­per­sad. The vic­tim in the video has like­ly been iden­ti­fied. These crim­i­nals are re­lent­less.

I think, like many oth­er cit­i­zens, that the SoE has lost its sting for the re­al crim­i­nals. It is dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy how many have re­sort­ed to hon­est work in fear of the ex­tra pow­ers giv­en to the po­lice dur­ing the SoE be­cause crime con­tin­ues at un­ac­cept­able lev­els.

Don’t the crim­i­nals know what a SoE is? Maybe the old­er gang mem­bers can do lit­tle bet­ter than go out “feet first” like the “tall boots crew,” but what about the at-risk youth fol­low­ing in their boot­steps? Are there enough tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al al­ter­na­tives to the tra­di­tion­al school cur­ricu­lum? There should be ear­ly de­tec­tion of de­viant com­pul­sion in schools and rel­e­vant in­ter­ven­tions. How many clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists are as­signed to each ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict? How adept are the cur­rent Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vice per­son­nel at di­ag­nos­ing learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and mal­adap­tive be­hav­iours?

I doubt that many schools in our coun­try are pre­pared to han­dle ab­nor­mal psy­chol­o­gy. The teach­ers would prob­a­bly be hap­py if they just dropped out of school, but where do we ex­pect them to go? A child who be­came a gang mem­ber mur­dered two-year-old Akin­ni Kafi and an­oth­er, eight-year-old J’Lay­na Arm­strong, in April. Spare the chil­dren, at least! They are not col­lat­er­al dam­age!

Those whom I want to scream this at won’t or can’t read it. The Gov­ern­ment should bring back the ZOSO Bill with amend­ments and test it with Op­po­si­tion sup­port. If it fails, they can al­ways blame the Op­po­si­tion!

The TTPS has been able to cap­ture and kill the low-lev­el home in­vaders, but the cit­i­zen­ry wants to know that the gang lead­ers suf­fer such a fate. When will be the “big fish” fry? The mul­ti­ple mo­bile po­lice posts with 24-hour joint foot pa­trols and drone sur­veil­lance?

NGC Chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen has said that “cross-bor­der gas and the Drag­on gas have to come to Trinidad” be­cause our ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture is the on­ly vi­able in­stru­ment for the mon­e­ti­za­tion of those hy­dro­car­bons. That’s good to know, but will we get the most val­ue out of this com­pul­so­ry arrange­ment? Will the Ro­driguez regime har­bour re­sent­ment and seek to swin­dle us at every op­por­tu­ni­ty?

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sobers con­firmed that the vis­it of a T&T del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela will be a long process. That is by de­sign. The Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent wants us to grov­el. Maybe the high­est-rank­ing Trin­bag­on­ian em­ploy­ee of the en­er­gy ma­jors could be made a “Min­is­ter of Ne­go­ti­a­tions” and tag along in a dual role? Oth­er than that, the en­er­gy ma­jors and Venezuela may leave us the scraps. It is in our na­tion­al in­ter­est to patch things up with Venezuela. In­ter­im Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez seems like she will go on a world tour be­fore en­ter­tain­ing us.

I don’t think I have ever seen a lo­cal bank be­ing stopped dead in its tracks like Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd has. It had in­tend­ed to launch a new sched­ule of fee in­creas­es, but pub­lic out­cry and the in­ter­ven­tion of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai caused a “cease fire,” but for how long, though? The Gov­ern­ment has ma­jor­i­ty con­trol of the Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, so I think the board will be a bit more cir­cum­spect be­fore ex­tract­ing more fees, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter RFHL made a $1.07 bil­lion prof­it. For the first half of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year.

An­oth­er ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank, FCB, has stat­ed that it has no plans for fee in­creas­es in the near-term. The bot­tom line is that cit­i­zens are fed up with tax­es, fees, and fines. So “axe the tax!” RBL will get cred­it for lis­ten­ing, but they wouldn’t have to lis­ten if voic­es weren’t raised.

Last Fri­day, the Pa­role Bill was be­ing de­bat­ed in the Par­lia­ment. It would be an in­ter­est­ing move for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion of the re­formed ex-con­victs. It should al­so ease the bur­den on the prison sys­tem and make room for longer stays of the men­aces cur­rent­ly on the out­side.

The week­end vis­it of In­di­an Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr S Jais­hankar was a re­in­force­ment of our good re­la­tions with the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of In­dia. Hav­ing both the USA and In­dia on our side is great. We look for­ward to Venezuela’s favour al­so.