Deja vu on the SRU

WHAT can we and the concerned citizens of our country say in response to the new anti-crime initiative announced by Prime Minister Patrick Manning on Saturday? Our hope, of course, is that the creation of a Special Response Unit in the police service will have some effect in curbing the increasingly brazen activity of criminals, but it is a spontaneous and instinctive hope, rather than a realistic one, born out of the worrying lack of success so far of a series of similar initiatives and operations. The latest effort, according to Mr Manning, is "a formidable action plan" which has been devised to deal with gang-related murders, involving, among other things, the formation of a "Special Response Unit" comprising 400 persons carefully selected from the Police Service and Defence Force. The careful screening of personnel for this Unit, the PM intimated, may include polygraph testing. In addition, Mr Manning announced a $3 million expansion of the Crime Stoppers Programme "into every corner of the country," the installation of surveillance cameras at strategic locations and the upgrading of the existing coastal radar surveillance system. Also, the specialist Community Policing Unit is also to be re-established.

To citizens growing ever more anxious over the crime crisis, including the murderous warfare among rival gangs, the reaction to this new "action plan" may well be one of deja vu since it seems to be basically more of the same, the creation of another "special squad" and following on such hopeful but unsuccessful operations as Anaconda and Baghdad. Indeed, in spite of the night-and-day patrols being carried out by joint Police-Army teams in Laventille and other crime-prone areas, the armed robberies and killings continue unchecked. As far as we could remember, and particularly under the late Commissioner Randolph Burroughs, the stock official reaction to the crime problem was the formation of some special squad and the launching of some drag-net operation. The new plan, it seems, amounts to the considerable expansion of an old idea, this time with 400 men operating in a Special Response Unit which, because of its size, may have some impact on the crime problem. We will just have to wait and see. Our view is that if such manpower is now to be deployed to deal with this violent menace, then the Unit must be well organised with adequate mobility and communication covering the entire country. On the other hand, creation of the SRU must result in a depletion of the regular ranks of the Police Service and Defence Force, a situation which the Government should move simultaneously to remedy, particularly since the Police Service is seriously understaffed as it is.

Our advice to the Government is to abandon the idea of resurrecting the Community Policing Unit as this has proved to be a total failure. Apart from reports of malingering, we understand that the Unit was disbanded because of the widespread misuse of its vehicles which were employed in the conduct of family business, transporting groceries and taking children to and from school. Fighting the crime wave with greater law-enforcement numbers may be a useful effort but, as we have said before, one of the core problems in this battle is the lack of intelligence penetration by the police. Although we have heard officers say that they know who the criminal bosses are behind the gangs, they seem impotent to get at these "kingpins," even by the use of testimony obtained from assassination targets. Clearly, the strategy of "Baghdad-like" raids and an increased number of policemen and soldiers patrolling different places have failed to stem the bloody bullet-ridden tide.