While the coun­try re­mains in the grip of an ap­par­ent siege by mur­der­ers who are seem­ing­ly stalk­ing their vic­tims at will with­out fear of reper­cus­sions, some­thing may have passed qui­et­ly over the week­end in an­oth­er Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive piece.

In­deed, while the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion fi­nal­ly put aside po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences last week to vote and pass the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill, came the rev­e­la­tion last week­end that well-known busi­ness­men were fur­ther en­rich­ing them­selves as part of crim­i­nal gangs and car­tels.

The ar­ti­cle quot­ed ex­ten­sive­ly from a po­lice in­tel­li­gence re­port which not­ed that these busi­ness­men, num­ber­ing some 40 at the time it was com­piled, col­lude with known gang­sters to par­tic­i­pate in var­i­ous ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing drug deal­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing and gun-run­ning. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, many of them do so through the op­er­a­tions of what can be termed “le­gal busi­ness­es,” while gang­sters are al­so set­ting up busi­ness es­tab­lish­ments through which they chan­nel and laun­der their ill-got­ten gains.

If what is re­port­ed in the doc­u­ment is cor­rect, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s top brass claims at be­ing sur­prised that the of­fi­cers who in­ves­ti­gat­ed and pre­sent­ed the in­for­ma­tion which con­tributed to the re­port did not them­selves make ar­rests act­ing on this in­tel­li­gence at some stage is dis­con­cert­ing.

And there­in lies T&T’s biggest prob­lem. It is a slap in the face of what oc­curred last week in the Par­lia­ment that po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to be a big part of this prob­lem. We have known for years of rogue el­e­ments with­in the ser­vice who fa­cil­i­tate this ac­tiv­i­ty for their fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit.

On­ly re­cent­ly, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has raised the is­sue of state con­tracts be­ing award­ed to gang­sters as his biggest point in the ar­gu­ment of the po­lice’s in­ep­ti­tude in com­pil­ing con­crete ev­i­dence to con­vict per­pe­tra­tors of not on­ly mur­ders but se­ri­ous crime al­to­geth­er. This lat­est re­port clear­ly shows that the Com­mis­sion­er must al­so sort out these griev­ous in-house mat­ters as well if he is to achieve his ul­ti­mate goal of erad­i­cat­ing the crime prob­lem.

Need­less to say, Mr Grif­fith’s oth­er ar­gu­ment about poly­graph tests for of­fi­cers must al­so now be part of the way go­ing for­ward. In this re­gard, we note the stance of new­ly-mint­ed Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent In­sp Gideon Dick­son that Grif­fith can­not com­pel of­fi­cers to take such tests. We counter-ar­gue, how­ev­er, that full com­pli­ance with this pol­i­cy will go a long way to­wards restor­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

We can­not con­tin­ue to be hyp­o­crit­i­cal about deal­ing with the crime is­sue. We must deal with the ruth­less crim­i­nals armed with guns, those armed with the pen and the of­fi­cers who fa­cil­i­tate crim­i­nal en­ter­prise with the same fer­vour, since these ac­tiv­i­ties all ul­ti­mate­ly pro­duce the same re­sult—deny­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of the right to prop­er ser­vices and the abil­i­ty to con­duct their with­out emo­tion­al fear of crime pos­si­bly reach­ing their doorstep at any time.