An­na-Lisa Paul

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams urged fa­thers to be­come more in­volved in their chil­dren's lives, pro­vid­ing a steady di­et of spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al sup­port, so that few­er young peo­ple will be drawn in­to gangs and lives of crime.Williams, who spoke at a Fa­ther's Day Mass at the Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, re­called his ear­ly days grow­ing up in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty.

"Our so­ci­ety then was not plagued with high lev­els of crime, es­pe­cial­ly vi­o­lent crimes. The firearm was not preva­lent in so­ci­ety. Even though my par­ents were very poor, I have mem­o­ries of be­ing very hap­py," he said.Speak­ing to a con­gre­ga­tion that in­clud­ed his wife, Mag­is­trate Ava­son Quin­lan, Williams said: "Our so­ci­ety to­day is be­ing over­whelmed by vi­o­lence. Since the year 2000, there have been phe­nom­e­nal in­creas­es in mur­ders lead­ing up to the year 2008.

"Since then, the an­nu­al de­creas­es in mur­ders from the year 2009 have been small. How­ev­er, the firearm has con­tin­ued to be the main weapon of choice in the com­mis­sion of mur­ders, as 76 per cent of all the mur­ders in 2014 were com­mit­ted with firearms."Williams said he was heart­ened by "sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions in se­ri­ous crimes such as rob­beries, lar­ce­nies, house­break­ing and kid­nap­pings in 2013 and 2014 com­pared to pre­vi­ous years."

How­ev­er, he said: "Crime is still rat­ed as a ma­jor con­cern of the cit­i­zens of our coun­try."The top cop ac­knowl­edged young peo­ple were the main of­fend­ers and blamed this on an ap­par­ent ab­sence of love for God and neigh­bour. "Our so­ci­ety to­day is plagued with the ab­sence of fa­thers from many fam­i­lies. A very high per­cent­age of our young boys have no fa­ther fig­ure in their lives as they grow up to be young men," he said

Williams said the prob­lem was fur­ther com­pound­ed by fa­thers who were un­able to pro­vide emo­tion­al, ed­u­ca­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al sup­port for their chil­dren, which some­times leads to many young peo­ple try­ing to fill that void by join­ing crim­i­nal gangs and pur­su­ing a life of crime.Speak­ing with re­porters fol­low­ing the church ser­vice, Williams said he was un­able to pro­vide any de­tails on in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the al­leged dis­cov­ery of mar­i­jua­na at the prime min­is­ter's pri­vate res­i­dence in Phillip­ine, on April 12, 2013.