WE JUST CAN’T GO ON THIS WAY

THE Government has clearly played its last card on crime.

And that makes the current violent spree even more frightening.

When the security boss blames pornographic videos and the police chief pleads for prayers, you know the authorities have frantically thrown their hands into the air.

This follows a parade of legislations from gadfly attorney general Faris Al Rawi, parroted by the then-bumbling security head Edmund Dillon, based on four pages of textbook solutions in the PNM’s 2015 general election manifesto.

Along the way, high-handed Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has wildly held everyone to account – family, school, community, reckless women, the political opposition, social media, the public health system – except his inept administration.

In 2014, when crime statistics were less severe, Rowley, campaigning for national leadership, bemoaned: “I can’t recall any time in this country a bloodbath taking place like this…”

Today, facilitated by a largely docile society, his administration feigns that crime is a rampant new phenomenon wider than our vulnerable twin islands.

So, a taxpayer-funded symposium on crime would regurgitate blabber about international gun running, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

The media and urban status quo would lap the spiels as new revelations, and some, including certain columnists, would commend the authorities for their courage and diligence.

But the bloodletting would continue, with motorists being gunned down at traffic stops and innocent elderly assaulted at their homes.

We have heard the reasons – and prescribed solutions – more times than we wish to recall.

A decade ago, a high-powered Professor Selwyn Ryan-headed committee did a 436-page diagnostic and appealed for urgent and decisive action on endangered communities and for social and economic equity.

Reform of the education system, more social opportunities, use of the military, a national service, border security and effective surveillance were among the proposals in the report, titled No Time to Quit.

Crime, the Ryan team concluded, is “a dagger aimed” at Port of Spain.

Incompetence and disregard by the authorities have since led to a wretched capital city, being deserted by merchants and shoppers and the subject of dark security warnings from the developed world.

Port of Spain’s current state could become the fate of several other urban centres.

Al Rawi’s pious posturing about rooting out gangs has been exposed as being as vacuous as he is.

A prominent clergyman told me last weekend that drug operators are now recruiting rural teenagers, especially in certain identified communities.

He said that more than ever, goons are baptising young family members into criminality.

There are drug fortresses in previous serene communities, guns and ammo are as commonplace as potholes, and young thugs generally have the measure of an under-resourced police service.

The Government has also disregarded damning United States Department of State reports on human trafficking, police and immigration sleaze, and white-collar crime, including corruption caused by weak procurement laws.

And no one – not even a single watchdog agency – is holding the authorities to account, even after the US said that certain officials are “engaged in corrupt practices with impunity.”

Unchecked crime destabilises societies, chases away investors and the middle class, causes a brain drain, creates a wild west drug society, and corrupts public officials.

Trinidad and Tobago is at that dangerous edge.

In the immortal words of the late and lamented calypsonian Explainer, we just can’t go on this way.