COP: Turn to the people for crime answers

“Government must acknowledge the right of the people to be involved in decision-making in matters that affect their very lives,” he said.

Demonstrations and other actions, Mahabir said in a release, must not merely be complaints but must demand involvement in the national dialogue about how to deal with the scourge, the social decay that is fuelling it, and how to make their right to safety and security real.

When it appeared that the nation was becoming numb and resigned to daily disappearances and brutal death, he said, “the killing of a young woman doing the most routine things, many her age do, has again awakened the emotion of our people against the fear and vulnerability that we feel as citizens enjoying no sense of security or safety, day or night.” Banfield was found dead on Friday in the third-floor store room of a popular business place in one of the busiest streets in Port-of-Spain, four days after she was shopping in the area.

Mahabir extended sympathies on behalf of the COP to Banfield’s family, friends and colleagues on their tragic loss.

Banfield was not the first woman to disappear in 2016 or in recent years and her killing comes after more than 430 for the year so far, he said, but her death like that of Japanese pan player Asami Nagakiya on Carnival Tuesday, has touched a raw nerve.