THE WORSENING CRIME EPIDEMIC

A female cousin – a single mother and sole trader – had a gun placed at her throat by three gangsters a few days ago. 

The teenage criminals told her she would be shot if she screamed. 

Terrified, she screamed, anyway, alerting a man who rushed to enquire. 

The brazen bandits turned the gun to the man’s head, snatched nearby valuables, and hustled off on foot. 

The crime took place in a rural community, better known for warmth than weapons. 

Telephones at the town’s police station were not working, and when officers finally turned up, in their typical staid manner they posed questions, dusted for fingerprints, and anxiously poked around. 

The odds are that this would become another unsolved crime. 

A measly seven percent of crimes in Trinidad and Tobago lead to arrests, and even those cases do not necessarily result in legal convictions. 

Crime is a prosperous domestic industry. 

The judiciary is practically dysfunctional. 

The woeful police chief is so dazed that he is pleading for help from the same besieged nation, while CCTV cameras are down, scientific measures are limited, and other vital resources are in critically short supply. 

The Police Service Commission, now a political plaything, is an idle bystander. 

Valued stakeholders – faith-based organisations, business, labour, the legal profession, academia etc. – are grumbling only within their fold. 

My cousin remains terror-stricken and is not sure when she would return to earning money to put food on the table. 

But as macabre as it sounds, she is one of the lucky ones. 

People of all ages are being murdered or assaulted and robbed at every conceivable place any hour of day or night every single day of the year. 

Crime statistics are so appalling that they have lost impact on an overwhelmed nation. 

A New York newspaper recently emblazoned a page one headline about four weekend murders; that weekend, T&T reported nine gruesome killings. 

Months ago, with a lower murder toll, T&T was identified by a reputable organisation as the seventh most violent non-war country on earth. 

Only a tiny fraction of the day’s crimes make it to the news. 

The police service manipulates the media with pictures of gun “hauls” while more and more high-powered weapons mow down law-abiding citizens. 

The traditional media is becoming increasingly distant from the people. 

Guardian Media has just reported another financial loss, the result of continued decline in legacy media as much as growing irrelevance from the burning issues of the day. 

Seven years ago, Dr. Keith Rowley’s PNM promised to zap the scourge of crime with an “all-of-government” approach. 

There were manifesto promises aplenty and heaps of criticisms of the incumbent regime. 

“Crime is out of control,” the PNM spiel read, adding that T&T “has been determined by the United Nations to be the tenth most homicidal and violent country in the world”. 

A shopping list of problems was identified, and prescriptions were outlined. 

The Attorney General and National Security Minister routinely assured Parliament of “a menu of measures”. 

These days, government officials scarcely talk about the plague of our times, and when they do, they blandly term it “a social phenomenon”. 

Prime Minister Rowley discusses crime in a detached, academic manner, and recently termed it “a national health crisis”. 

A blindsided nation does not know what of make of that esoteric term, except that crime is an epidemic. 

Most disturbingly, gun-toting bandits have not gotten the memo. 

Videos of thugs spewing lead are as commonplace as hit pieces against their leader from UNC dissidents. 

Rowley has promised another investigation, even as the frightful findings 10 years ago of the Professor Selwyn Ryan Committee are all coming to pass. 

Businesses are fleeing Port of Spain, now one of the most murderous capital cities in this part of the world. 

While blood-thirsty criminals roam the land, there is no new action plan from the authorities, commentators remain indifferent and a lot of opposition fury is directed at itself. 

The current internecine UNC conflict on local government is typical of the skewed national discourse. 

Inequity in the funding of the local government sector is a primary cause of floods, wrecked roads, and other woes for residents of rural, opposition-held communities. 

UNC outliers, meanwhile, are indulging in corrosive character attacks on colleagues instead of pressing the authorities on social and economic issues. 

For its part, the government’s local government meeting last week provided no assurance of equitable development of rural areas. 

In 2015, the PNM intoned that “crime remains the most serious problem affecting our citizens today”. 

Now, on our 60^th independence anniversary, there is an endemic national disease of assaults, attacks and abuse. 

Ask my scared cousin.