Crim­i­nals who have been threat­en­ing large scale slaugh­ter of po­lice of­fi­cers got strong push back from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, in his first pub­lic com­ment on the fiery protests on the out­skirts of Port-of-Spain.

In di­rect re­sponse to voice mes­sages re­leased by gang­sters in re­cent days warn­ing of a blood­bath, his de­c­la­ra­tion to them was that it "is a war you will not win."

Af­ter two days of up­heavals in parts of the cap­i­tal and en­vi­rons, Dr Row­ley's state­ment came amid an un­easy calm. His stance was firm­ness in the face of the threats, as well as as­sur­ances to the young peo­ple caught up in the rage over last week­end's po­lice-in­volved killing.

Even as he made the dis­tinc­tion be­tween jus­tice and the re­venge be­ing de­mand­ed by the pro­tes­tors, Dr Row­ley al­so ac­knowl­edged the mon­u­men­tal hur­dles of treat­ing with com­mu­ni­ties "awash with firearms" and the stark re­al­i­ty of "five dead peo­ple, a num­ber of griev­ing fam­i­lies, and a bruised na­tion look­ing to the fu­ture, hop­ing that this would be a thing of the past."

Whether his words will res­onate with those who most need to hear them will be­come clear over the next few days. How­ev­er, if Dr Row­ley se­ri­ous­ly wants to see an end to "mob be­hav­iour" from the an­gry young peo­ple who lit fires and staged protests over thee days, there must be a long-term plan to re­spond to their cries.

These are peo­ple fa­mil­iar with job­less­ness, liv­ing in ar­eas where dead­ly shootouts are reg­u­lar oc­cur­rences. Many of them have lost loved ones to gun vi­o­lence, or are close to some­one who has ex­pe­ri­enced that trau­ma. These are facts that must guide the poli­cies and pro­grammes to be de­vel­oped in the com­ing months.

There is al­so an­oth­er crit­i­cal mat­ter. Dr Row­ley dis­agrees that the is­sues of race, re­li­gion and ge­og­ra­phy are ma­jor fac­tors be­hind the un­rest, al­though these are mat­ters that are hard to ig­nore, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lat­ter.

The lo­ca­tion of these ar­eas at the gate­ways in­to the na­tion's cap­i­tal is part of the rea­son why they are so reg­u­lar­ly flash­points for dis­tur­bances in­volv­ing the block­ing of traf­fic on the ma­jor road­ways in­to the city.

Fix­ing these com­mu­ni­ties is crit­i­cal for peace, se­cu­ri­ty and or­der across the coun­try, so the Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery Pro­gramme must be care­ful­ly planned and ex­e­cut­ed to make a dif­fer­ence.

Get­ting the res­i­dents to stand down on their quest for re­venge and trust that jus­tice will be de­liv­ered is an­oth­er ma­jor hur­dle. Build­ing a re­la­tion­ship of trust be­tween them and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will be hard. There have been too many vi­o­lent con­fronta­tions, too much spilling of blood, for a straight path to heal­ing and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

As Dr Row­ley stat­ed, the onus is on the po­lice "to win and pre­serve the trust of the pop­u­la­tion, oth­er­wise polic­ing will be dif­fi­cult." That trans­for­ma­tion must be­gin with and be led by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

If all these pieces are made to fit to­geth­er and work, there will be brighter days for T&T's trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties.