TRINIDAD and Tobago has a lot in common with Haiti, the global basket case on crime.
A comparison finds that the incidence of home invasions is worse in T&T than in the crime-ridden Caricom sister country.
In several categories – such as armed robberies, vandalism, attacks in public, car thefts, and white-collar crime – T&T rates marginally better than the anarchy-enveloped land.
Haiti ranks worse in gang violence, homicides, rapes, and lynchings.
In some fields, there is only a marginal difference in per capita crime rates between Port of Spain and Port-au-Prince.
It is mind-boggling that T&T could be in the same company as a country for which United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez has called for an international peace-keeping force.
Gutierrez wants at least 2,000 more law enforcement officers, and has urged major countries to “act now” to “defeat and dismantle the gangs.”
In Haiti’s capital city and other communities, marauding armed gangsters roam the streets, assaulting, robbing, abducting, and murdering at will.
News agencies report that the crime rate has more than doubled since last year.
“The Haitian people are trapped in a living nightmare,” Gutierrez said last week.
“Humanitarian conditions are beyond appalling.”
Investigations have found collusion with gang members, misconduct, abuse of power and criminal activities by certain people in office.
In recent times, there has been a rise in vigilante groups, and the murders of at least 264 gangsters.
That is the land whose company Trinidad and Tobago is keeping.
The fact that CEPEP contracts are fuelling crime adds a dreadful layer to an unending spree of violence, with murderous gangsters roving the land, converting once-secured communities into hotspots.
Brutal home invasions and killings of innocent and vulnerable senior citizens are now a horrible fact of life in the once happy-go-lucky T&T.
In all of this, there is Erla Harwood-Christopher, a functionary who has risen to lead the Police Service similar to a longstanding teacher becoming school principal despite an absence of management skills and strategic thinking.
Under Ms. Harewood-Christopher’s tortured tenure, the crime scourge has only worsened while detection rates are generally in single digits.
The response of the top cop has been to pull futile promises from a hat, further unveiling the absence of any rational thought process, objective- setting or considered plan.
Erla is simply winging it.
Her belated response to the escalating crisis through a video recording reveals a manifest lack of confidence and tenacity at a time when the nation deserves a strong-willed, purpose-driven police chief.
Erla is doubtlessly the wrong person for the critical and urgent job of rescuing T&T from its Haiti-headed path.
The best that can be said about her is that she is no worse than her immediate predecessor – whatever his name.
Erla ought to have been permitted to shuffle around the police service until her retirement, and then given a rocking chair and wristwatch as she rode into the sunset.
The driftless Keith Rowley administration must be held accountable for imposing an ill-equipped commissioner and for not providing the requisite policy measures and essential resources.
The recent Sunday meeting between Rowley and the police top brass was further troubling evidence of the authorities grasping at straws, touting measures that are already in the law-books.
Ms. Harewood-Christopher reportedly promised an ease in the crime plague by year’s-end.
In the absence of a focused plan and concerted action, no one could have faith in this seat-warmer, whose destiny would be similar to most of her recent hapless forerunners.
Her image has been further impacted by the stinging allegations of impropriety by Tobago House of Assembly Chief Secretary Farley Augustine.
It’s not that Augustine’s claims are confirmed – they should be properly investigated – but the fact that they were made at all indicates the fragile state of the commissioner’s persona.
The fact that a senior national official as the THA boss could level such accusations against the police chief is a crushing indictment on the law enforcement agency.
The Police Service continues to be seen as a plaything of the PNM Government, and Ms. Harewood-Christopher has not redressed that sorry state.
Wet paper is cutting Erla.
The raw reality is that the government and the police boss are outmaneuvered by young thugs with modern weapons and heartlessness toward human life.
Both Rowley and Erla are fiddling while T&T burns.
The Prime Minister’s fate would be determined by the electorate at the appropriate time.
As for the Police Commissioner, she should be immediately relieved of a post for which she is ill-fitted and replaced by an officer with a plan and commitment to restore T&T to relative peace and security.
Surely, that should not be too much to ask.
