Tackling Crime

The murders with impunity of so many young men is one thing: the killings of innocent young women quite another. The country was shaken to its core by the recent murders of Shannon Banfield and then teenaged schoolgirl Rachael Ramkissoon, these only the latest in several deaths of girls and young women by violence over the years.

Some weeks ago, a collection of NGOs and citizens came together outside the Parliament to make the case for more concerted community action to reduce crime in our country. Around the same time another group launched an app that would assist in the reporting of crime. These initiatives are note-worthy. First, we are prepared to take responsibility for our society. The traditional attitude has been that crime is the problem of the government or the police alone.

For its part, the police have for a very long time, been saying that crime reduction requires community activism and support. However, the police themselves have a huge trust deficit with the society, which inhibits cooperation.

And we would be naive not to acknowledge that the police service has problems of corruption as well as lack of competence and commitment within its ranks.

But there can be little real improvement in the crime situation without real cooperation between communities and the police. The second reason to applaud the initiatives is that they signal that the population will not succumb to fear. To do so would be effectively to surrender our society to the criminal element. It is fear and a sense of helplessness, which fuels the strident calls for capital punishment. It is fear that prevents the Inland Revenue from pursuing gambling operations and persons whose assets and wealth cannot be explained. It may be fear that has paralysed successive administration into promoting palliatives and public relations, instead of taking bold and purposeful action. Cynics may well say that, over the years, we have had many marches, vigils, days of prayer and other public demonstrations of concern for the worsening crime situation, and these have not been sustained and have borne no fruit.

That cynicism can turn into despair or seek refuge in the literal reading of beatitudes that somehow, sometime, the meek, the humble righteous will triumph. But the beatitudes, which remind us of the ultimate life to which we are called, do not preclude our taking responsibility for our communities and our society while we are here in this life. Indeed, we have a duty to do so.

It is not beyond us to tackle and resolve crime and criminality in our country. It is certainly time to implement as quickly as possible local police units under the regional corporations and in Tobago, with a separate command structure though under the Commissioner of Police, as well as for an elite police unit focused in drugs, gambling and white-collar crime also with a command structure separate from the mainstream police service, and which employs information technology experts, scientists and senior officers recruited from abroad.

It is time to strengthen the Police Complaints Authority and provide more resources to the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is certainly time to target and choke off the profits of drugs and gambling by punitive taxation of gambling and by strengthening the FIU to investigate and prosecute money laundering.

And it is time for our magistrates and judges to put the citizens first and recognise that justice is not served when slothful prosecutions and the delaying tactics of lawyers are accommodated far too easily. We too must do our part in our communities by being vigilant, by agitating for purposeful official action, and by reporting suspicious activity and incidents to the police.