Our Homeland Security Fantasy

Of course Dillon was wrong; murder does not exist everywhere, and in most places where it does, the per capita ratio is drastically lower than here. Our murder rate is high because of the amount of guns; guns follow drugs. Drugs do not freely flow through every country’s border.

Guns do not easily arrive in containerized cargo at every country’s ports. Not every country has criminal organisations being run by police officers, affluent businessmen and government officials. Not every country allows its residents to accumulate unknown wealth without question.

But, Dillon exemplified how people justify their failure; they make excuses and compare themselves to others who are - real or imagined – in a similar or worse position.

This gaffe is akin to a motorist who gets caught driving on the shoulder and when asked why, gives the excuse that “other people were doing it”. Or like a person who performs poorly in an Olympic event and in order to justify his failure, he speculates about others cheating through their supposed use of performance enhancing drugs.

It is called deflection; a common tactic used by those who have no good excuse to explain away their failures, so they throw the attention unto others. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around Dillon’s comment. Just imagine; a Minister responsible for homeland security is telling the citizenry that our desire to live in a safe country is a fantasy and that we should be thankful that it isn’t worse. Well, I will continue living in this parallel utopian universe until we revert to the safe Trinidad and Tobago fantasy that my grandparents and parents were lucky enough to experience.

When he was selected as a candidate leading up to the 2015 general election, I knew the position he was being scouted for and I sighed. We clearly have not learnt anything from past holders of the National Security top dog position. John Sandy failed; Gary Griffith failed, yet, for some odd reason, is still given media attention for his infinite national security knowledge; and Carl Alfonso failed. With this failed record of ex-military men as security Ministers, it was hard to see Dillon being any different, and this became more and more obvious as time went on. I am mystified by the romanticisation of these ex-military men in Trinidad and Tobago who spent decades doing very little, and then achieve rank automatically based on seniority and by simply showing an interest in progression.

These men do not possess the education, knowledge, relevant experience or know-how to run the national security operations of a crime-ridden country such as ours. And anyone with a scintilla of criminal justice knowledge knows that an effective Minister of National Security in this country can only be a person with a strong background in criminology and criminal justice. Needless to say, no experienced military personnel in our country has that level of academic edification.

The only ones being unrealistic are the successive Prime Ministers who keep trying the same thing by using the same quasi-qualified people with the same background and expecting a different result. So with Dillon at the helm of national security and this other man as the Chief of Police, we are sure to have at least one year with 600 murders by 2020 because, after all, that’s life.

As statistics and other figures are thrown out at us about how crime has decreased in certain categories, society is unmoved because those figures mean nothing to the reality we live.

Finding guns and ammunition is easier when there is more of it to find; there’s no comfort in that. Unconstitutionally locking up little black boys is an exercise in futility because they aren’t the ones with the connections, money and capabilities to import drugs and guns. We are definitely living in a fantasy, but it is the fantasy where we expected this government to be more serious about dealing with crime.

jamille85@ msn.com