PRIME Minister Dr. Keith Rowley is at the heart of yet another stillborn anti-crime measure even as more guns enter the country.
This time Rowley is touting a Caricom-wide arrest warrant legislation.
Regional countries are setting up a similar system of warrants for accused criminals.
Rowley is so confident about the impact of the law that he brags that “criminal punks” will have “no safe harbours.”
But he has sidestepped the reality that the rates of criminal detection in Trinidad and Tobago and other regional countries are appallingly low.
And even when there are arrests of accused criminals, there are few convictions because of the botched justice system that includes corrupt prosecutors, murdered witnesses and lost evidence.
In addition, T&T’s coastline remains woefully porous, making arrests for gun and drug trafficking a rare activity.
Still further, the Government, through then-Attorney General Faris Al Rawi, previously claimed that the authorities knew the country’s gangsters.
Al Rawi proudly made the declaration in Parliament as he promoted anti-gang legislation.
Since then, gangs have become a growth industry, with some groups of hooligans splintering into other teams of mobsters.
Criminals are mushrooming throughout the land, murdering and terrorising residents of even rural communities.
No gangsters have been brought to justice.
Instead, in a bizarre twist, the police arrested and are prosecuting a man who visited gang enclaves and videotaped activities of the underworld.
Rowley has not explained how the law on warrants would become applicable with gangsters having the lay of the land, escape arrests and carry more high-powered weapons than the police.
A brand-new report by a United States agency said more guns and ammunition are flowing from that country to the Caribbean and Latin America, causing even more conflict in these lands.
There are no gun factories in T&T and the rest of the Caribbean.
The report noted that “traffickers in the US are a major source of illicit weapons.”
The Americans made the stunning declaration that “the illicit acquisition and use of firearms in the Caribbean and Latin America ranks among the most pressing security threats in the hemisphere.”
Up to a million firearms are smuggled from the US each year, with 77 per cent being AK- and AR-style rifles.
It is evident that more and more are in the hands of the “criminal punks” that the T&T authorities are unable to nab.
But, like Humpty Dumpty, Rowley is sitting on a wall, removed and indifferent to the fact that he has lost the war to confine and convict a generation of brutal killers.
T&T is paying a heavy price for the failure over decades to provide leadership to and opportunities for driftless youths with little purpose and goals for their lives.
This latest stillborn idea is aimed at justifying the two-day Caricom crime conference in April 2023 and appears to be engaged in finding crime solutions.
Rowley claimed that certain official activities are “helping to slow the flow of arms to territories and to identify perpetrators and facilitators.”
The “criminal punks” may have let off a good laugh as they prepared their high-powered guns to take out another innocent life.
