DON’T HURRY BACK, JACOB

IN a serious land, acting police chief McDonald Jacob would have been told to go on an extended vacation. 

Maybe visit long-lost relatives, and, at age 60, take pre-retirement leave. 

But in this country of feeble leadership and ever-shattering violent crime records, Jacob would return to his desk, as if he is a successful executive who earned a break. 

The bald truth is that Jacob is a clear-cut disaster as our top crime fighter, even if he is given a free ride by an administration that is equally clueless against crime. 

A government that is holding onto a failed security minister and wouldn’t fix CCTV cameras cannot be expected to be serious about its police commissioner. 

In the private sector, such a chronic non-performer would have long been banished from its corridors. 

The fact that an audacious Jacob told the Express newspaper it is “an opportune time” to go on vacation further exposes the hellhole that Trinidad and Tobago has found itself. 

In a further surreal act, the police service says the boss is going on a “well-deserved vacation” and thanked him for his “astute leadership”. 

The bitter reality is that bloody crimes are so rampant that a mere fraction is reported in the traditional media, with greater coverage on social media as a dire warning to stricken fellow nationals. 

Crime has enveloped the entire society, with former quiet communities reduced to hotspots. 

There are still no attempts to limit the free flow of illegal arms and ammo, which young foolhardy thugs seem to order as easily as a two-piece chicken-and-chips. 

Anti-gang legislation is another waste, just like the hoopla about police intelligence. 

In T&T, it is every man, woman and child for himself, and the authorities are not even shaken by the tough international travel advisories. 

We are on a shortcut to the anarchy that prevails in Haiti, where the government is under siege and some police officers are gun-toting night-time gangsters. 

In all of that, Jacob gives himself a satisfactory rating, and the government does not even pretend to treat the crisis with urgency. 

The most recent salvo was to sign a crime-fighting pact with Jamaica’s Andrew Holness, whose own nightmare is so grave that he has declared a widespread state of emergency. 

The sequence of bizarre developments graphically tells us there is no light at the end of the bloody crime tunnel. 

As for the vacationing Jacob, he shouldn’t bother to hustle back any time soon.