Trinidad and Tobago is one of just a few countries in which the crime rate did not dip during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is in spite of a lengthy State of Emergency and patrolled night-time curfew.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that “reported robbery, theft, and burglary declined … by more than 50 percent in most countries” and homicides fell by “25 percent or more in some countries.”
In a study titled What’s Happened to Crime During the Pandemic, BBC said Britain recorded “the biggest annual decrease since 2010” and robbery and theft “dropped dramatically.”
Another report stated that “crime largely decreased around the globe during Covid-19,” with 27 cities in 23 countries having an average decline of 37 percent, with better figures for property-based offences.
T&T is set to record an average of 35 murders a month for 2021, comparable to most of the last decade, and significantly higher than 20 years ago.
Little old ladies are being massacred in their bedrooms, families wiped out, businessmen killed, taxi men slaughtered, a car buyer slain…
There is blood and gore everywhere, including in former secured family communities.
The detection rate is three in 20 serious crimes; that is not convictions – just arrests.
Three men accused of a six-year murder were freed this week because the chief prosecution witness had migrated.
More than 700 murder accused are currently awaiting trial, according to Chief Justice Ivor Archie, who admitted: “We have a crisis!”
There are no efforts at resolving this emergency, and the self-serving legal profession is not bothered.
In all of this, McDonald Jacob, one of two former Acting Commissioners of Police in the current circus, said an upsurge in gang violence is “nothing new” and “it is difficult for us to know when gangs will rile up.”
But that was not what theatrical Attorney General Faris Al Rawi assured us.
In piloting anti-gang legislation as a cure-all for crime in 2017, Al Rawi told Parliament there were 2,459 gangsters and the authorities know their names and locations.
In 2020, amid hi-jinks for amendments to the law, he restated that claim, and assured of citizens’ right to be protected from “fear, intimidation and physical harm.”
Gang activity, Al Rawi, said, “presents a danger to public order and safety and to economic stability, and has the ability to inflict social damage.”
Still, Jacob stood perplexed as gun warfare sprayed inner-city Port of Spain and Laventille a few days ago.
In March 2013, an authoritative report from Professor Selwyn Ryan and a high-powered team urged the authorities to “do whatever is necessary” to curb crime, including strategic planning and national service.
Crime, Ryan and his colleagues warned, is like a “dagger pointed at the soft underbelly of the capital city.”
In the intervening years, we have had one spectacle after another in the management of national security, even as the world looks aghast at the killing fields of Trinidad and Tobago.
“Violent crime, such as murder, robbery, assault, sexual assault, home invasion and kidnapping, is common,” the United States authorities said in its latest travel advisory on Trinidad and Tobago, titled Reconsider Travel.
In a just-released statement, the United Kingdom Government stated that “there are high levels of violent crime in Trinidad, including murder, particularly in parts of the capital, Port of Spain.
“Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in crowded spaces and places visited by foreigners.”
The Canadian Government, also in a brand-new advisory, told its citizens to “exercise a high degree of caution in Trinidad and Tobago due to violent crime.”
In all of this, the country’s President, no less, Paula Mae Weekes, is ringleader in a bizarre constitutional melee over a police chief, putting a lie to her inauguration day assurance of being a “humble first servant.”
Weekes is buttressed by a government that mixes ineptitude with arrogance, and facilitated by a compliant nation, including submissive trade unionists, clergymen, academics, and other thought leaders.
So, who is looking after our welfare?
Who is protecting us from the gangsters?