IT cannot become a routine day in Trinidad and Tobago when six people are murdered with abandon in one weekend. It cannot be business as usual when, a mere eight days into the new year, the country has already recorded 15 murders, twice the number for this period last year. Platitudes will do nothing to still the dread rising among the public that the pushback against criminality is a task apparently too big for those who occupy relevant public office.
The problem of violent gunplay is obviously escalating when the public is begging for abatement. Not only are shooting deaths common but now multiple people are being shot, injured and/or killed in mass shootings at various locations across this small country. The public’s sense of dread, confusion and fear is growing, accompanied by plummeting confidence in the police and Government to stem the tide.
Just this last weekend alone, Tunapuna, Belmont, Longdenville, Mt Lambert, Port of Spain, Aranjuez and Scarborough witnessed wanton disregard for law and order. In the case of Selwyn Pierre, killed at his Aranjuez home, the police were processing that scene when word came that Mr Pierre’s car, presumably stolen from his garage, was being used a short distance away in Mt Lambert to kill another man, Afiba Moraldo.
At the largest public recreation facility in Port of Spain, the Queen’s Park Savannah, Akiel Archer was killed early Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, at the Scarborough port, the heart of Tobago, in full view of members of the public, a man pulled out a gun and opened fire. Four men were wounded and attended to at the Scarborough Hospital.
In that context, the blithe reassurance from Commissioner of Police Erla Christopher that “the tides will turn” brings little comfort. Mrs Christopher must see the irony of her presence and attention at the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS)’s annual inter-faith service at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in downtown Port of Spain on a weekend in which bullets were flying in several public places in Tobago and Trinidad.
For years the TTPS has been reporting to the public those killings they consider “gang-related” and “reprisal killings” of “persons known to the police”. The organisation has presented detailed statistics on gangs to the public via several parliamentary Joint Select Committee (JSC) presentations. Yet, seized of all this knowledge, the TTPS has been unable to move efficiently to action their information with arrests, charges and prosecution.
The “gang-related” activities reported by the TTPS have predictably spilled over from so-called “hotspots” into open public spaces, populated by innocent citizens in high daytime. Citizens, already retreating indoors early the evening, are now ambushed as collateral damage in the daytime in public spaces frequented by families.
We are not reassured by the Commissioner’s approach nor by National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds’ promises of better border security. Public anxiety will be quelled only by decisive and coordinated action that results in the lifting of the blanket of insecurity spreading across towns and villages.
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