WAR AGAINST CRIME

While the country has heard similar pledges through the years from different Police Commissioners, yet the recent promise by Acting Commissioner of Police Everald Snaggs that the Police Service would win the war against crime has a more hopeful ring to it, what with Wednesday’s posting of 250 additional Special Reserve Police (SRP) officers to various divisions. In turn, the creation of a joint unit of Police and Army officers and ranks, now undergoing special training, the SRPs and other anti-crime initiatives of the Ministry of National Security has done much to instill the belief that the country’s streets are being made safer. Yet these by themselves are not enough and the Police and the Regiment will need to upgrade the efficiency of their Intelligence services.

Additionally, the Police Service will need to regain the confidence and trust of citizens, and should perhaps consider employing the strategies of the Crime Stoppers’ Unit which in a relatively short period has been able to convince a growing number of nationals that mechanisms are in place to ensure that information can be provided by them without their identities being revealed. For years there has been a breakdown in the old trust by the general public for the Police Service. This has not been by accident, but induced by the all too many cases of the names of citizens being passed on to criminals, including drug pushers, against whom they had made complaints to Police officers. The harassment, sometime inclusive of threats against their lives and/or persons, which invariably followed, has been all too often a contributory factor in the public’s reluctance to report matters of concern to the Police.

The other side of the proverbial coin is that it should be made easier for proven misfits in the Police Service, many of whom live in sizeable homes not reflected by their earnings and/or drive relatively expensive cars acquired since joining the Service, to be weeded out. A method to shorten the process, without infringing on their fundamental rights and freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution, needs to be worked out. No Police Service can operate effectively without the crucial information which can assist it in the rapid solving of crimes and ipso facto restoring public trust in it. But this will conceivably not be forthcoming until potential providers of this information, and not necesarily professional informers, can feel that their names and addresses will not be passed on to lawbreakers against whom they have sought action.

We do not seek in pointing out the above to dismiss or minimise other critical factors in the war against crime such as positive parenting, including positive parental examples; properly motivated teachers and Police officers, better communities, more properly manned early childhood education centres, motivating children to stay in school, greater facilities for skills training and development, church, temple and/or mosque-oriented families, the acquisition of improved technology for crime detection and communities looking out for each other. If these can be met then Trinidad and Tobago will be well on the way to making Acting COP Snaggs’ declaration that the war on crime would be won, achievable.