Citizens must play role in crime-fighting

“For many of us this growing concern about the rising spate of violence, especially murder, translates to fear, a fear that when we kiss and say goodbye to our loved ones, our children each morning, we or they, may not return home at the end of the day,” said director of the CORE Foundation Angelo Scope.

Added to the fear, Scope said, that a primary concern is the issue of public confidence in the State’s capacity to protect citizens and ensure justice.

Criminologist Dr Dianne Williams, who called for citizens to take responsibility for their security and work with the police to take back their communities from criminals, addressed the opening on Monday of CORE’s Citizens Safety and Security Conference at the Ministry of Legal Affairs auditorium in Port-of-Spain.

Williams said citizens blame the police for inefficiencies in the security service. “But are we doing the right thing? Or are we so fixated on blaming somebody else because we do not want to accept our role in the problem,” she asked. “If we are not a part of the solution,” she said, “we are a part of the problem.” Noting a general lack of trust in the police, Williams said, “We badtalk police officers without realising they are us.

A lot of the applicants fail the polygraphs. That is an indictment on us and the children we are raising.” If a police officer is corrupt, she said, that officer is either someone’s husband, son or grandson and it is their responsibility to pull him up, instead of craving benefits from corrupt activity.

“We have the responsibility and the power to police each other, which we do not do,” she said.

At the funerals of youths who engage in certain types of behaviour, Williams said, grandmothers in particular, would say, “He was such a good boy”, because he would, “put food on the table – at the risk of another grandmother’s grandchild. “It is our responsibility to police our children,” she insisted.

Noting the many negative influences that children are subjected to in the home by errant parents, Williams said, “When these children become corrupt police officers, we complain.

But the corrupt police officers who we feel we cannot trust to work with us to solve crime (are) a reflection of us.”