HEAVILY-ARMED gangsters took over police stations, setting fire to some.
That was the scene a few months ago in Haiti.
“Police officers, whose job is to protect and secure us, are so afraid of the criminals that they close the station door, turn off the lights… hoping the criminals don’t come at them.”
That is Trinidad and Tobago today, according to Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley, who in 2015 faithfully promised to conquer crime with an “all-of-government” approach.
In Haiti, gangsters have taken over prisons and freed inmates, closed the airport at Port-au-Prince, shut down the port, blocked highways, and murdered people at will.
Using high-powered American-made guns, criminals in Haiti – a land of 11.7 million people – killed just over 5,000 people last year.
Anarchy and failed State are common terms to describe the besieged country.
In T&T, jailbirds put out hits on prison officers, and there are more and more hotpots as gangs multiply and members become younger.
In this country of 1.5 million, 640 were murdered last year.
Just like blood-drenched Haiti, most criminals escape the justice system.
Gangsters in Haiti and T&T get their firepower from the United States, an American agency reported recently.
Rowley has still not made any efforts to seal the wide-open borders or to snuff out the gangs on these tiny islands.
The Prime Minister has bamboozled us with almost a decade of explanations and pretexts, including a Caricom conference on crime and branding the crisis as “a public health issue.”
He has opted for a state of emergency, a last-ditch legal measure that failed miserably in Haiti and Jamaica.
Now he is inflicting his brand of gallows humour in telling us that armed and trained law enforcement officers are also on the run from criminals.
Where does that leave defenceless citizens?
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