Your turn, Mr Joseph

THE NEW Minister of National Security Martin Joseph assures us that “the country can and will win this battle against crime.” Well, we must tell Mr Joseph, up front, that we have heard that song before. In fact, we believe the law-abiding citizens of Trinidad and Tobago have now grown quite bored, if not cynical and angry, over the flood of good intentions coming from the government while the crime scourge has been assuming crisis proportions. No one, of course, will envy the job that Mr Joseph has been given, he now sits perhaps in the hottest seat in the Cabinet, but the new Security Minister must know that the country now expects results from him, not more old talk on crime. The escalating problem will not go away as a result of a barrage of promises, expressions of outrage and piecemeal initiatives. As we said before, getting rid of the criminal element that terrorises our society can only be achieved by a comprehensive,  committed and sustained campaign by a Police service that is fully-manned, fully equipped, fully mobile, fully motivated and fully accountable.

Whether we will ever be able to produce a crime-fighting force of that calibre is a moot question, given the malaise that infects so much of the service following years of inept management and virtually non-existent discipline. We should not have needed ex-New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani to come here and make that point to us. It was obvious that he could not have solved New York’s terrible crime problem without first cleaning up the city’s police force of crooked and malingering cops, building its morale and instituting uncompromising systems of accountability and discipline. By comparison, whatever efforts have been made to reform TT’s police service over the years have been laughable, constrained by an obsolete system of rules and regulations. A long series of commissions, investigations and inquiries, producing a plethora of recommendations for improving the administration and effectiveness of the service have all been an absolute waste of time. Bitter experience will now tell us that we are reaping the “rewards” of that chronic impotence. The disjointed gestures the Police now manage to make, an operation here, some joint patrols there, increasing their presence in certain areas, launching new squads and units, may be helpful to some extent but it is clear that, as the nation’s crime-fighting force, they are not comprehensively,  cohesively and committedly up to the job.

And that, as far as we are concerned, is the crux of the problem. The failure to appreciate the criminal challenge in a society beset by mounting youth problems and the inability — and perhaps lack of will — by the authorities to reform the service and its decrepit system to meet this growing challenge have brought us to this sorry pass. In fact, even the measures taken to help in the prevailing circumstances were inadequate — increasing the manpower, sufficiently manning the stations, providing the necessary mobility and upgrading the technology. Where does Mr Joseph go from here? Many may wonder whether his government is really serious when the Prime Minister leaves the country at such a critical time to attend the Commonwealth talk shop in Nigeria. Whatever the case, our beleaguered population must now wait to see what are the “immediate remedies” the Minister has in mind, apart from the unavailing strategies of the past. It’s now his turn and he must be aware that action, not old talk, is desperately needed.