Action, not words

On Friday night, Prime Minister Patrick Manning gave the assurance that the Government is about to reveal some “very important interventions” which will stop the rising crime. He made this statement at the PNM’s Republic Day dinner, and he was probably wise to do so in a forum where he could be assured of respectful attention — or at least silence. After all, Mr Manning’s statement was made on the very day that kidnap victim Edward Koury’s headless body was discovered in Caparo, and the night after teenager Avinash Rattan was snatched outside his father’s hardware in Cunupia.

Also, around the very time Mr Manning was making his announcement, the first of four persons was being gunned down in Morvant. So Mr Manning’s assurance, which put the old wine of technology and legislation in a new Budget bottle, will no doubt be greeted with cynical disbelief. Unlike his colleague, Trade Minister Ken Valley, Mr Manning was careful not to give a time-frame within which his predicted drop in crime will occur. That coyness will merely reinforce citizens’ conviction that Mr Manning is indulging in hollow rhetoric.

Indeed, it is this, rather than solid initiatives,which seems to be the main crime weapon in Government spokespersons’ arsenal. We have had National Security Minister Martin Joseph talking about a “a 3.4 percent drop in the rate of increase of crime” and flourishing British tabloid newspapers while saying that there is crime in Britain, too. In his Republic Day message, Mr Manning took a similar tack, suggesting that heightened criminal activity is a by-product of progress and that Trinidad and Tobago was “not immune to the travails and trials facing the international community.”

What can be reasonably inferred from such statements? It seems that the Government does not think that its own policies, allied to the incompetence and/or corruption of law officers, are responsible for the present spate of murders, kidnappings, and other crimes. Instead, blame is laid at the door of unspecified international trends — trends which have not, however, lead to increased crime rates in Barbados even though, as a tourist economy, that Caribbean nation should presumably be far more vulnerable to such trends.

In placing its faith in technology and legislation, the Government has avoided tackling some of the really hard factors underlying the crime wave. It has not taken any action on illegal quarrying being carried out by the Jamaat al-Muslimeen. It has not put pressure on the Police Commissioner to take action against officers who have assaulted and even killed citizens. It has not questioned why the police have not been able to mount sting operations against kidnappers.

This is what we keep returning to. The failure of the authorities to control crime does not lie in lack of legislation and technology. It lies in more fundamental issues — a Government lacking in the political will to take hard action, and police officers who are incompetent or corrupt. If those issues are dealt with, then crime will be controlled. If they are not, all the laws and technology in the world will make not a whit of differences.