Ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, armed De­fence Force men were lined off at Beetham Es­tate, their guns slung low as con­struc­tion equip­ment cleared scrap met­al off the high­way at the south­ern end of the set­tle­ment. It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether this was a strate­gic ini­tia­tive to open ac­cess to the trou­bled area or if it was an ex­am­ple of the "bro­ken win­dow" think­ing-en­sur­ing that civic im­prove­ments were felt phys­i­cal­ly as well as legal­ly in a res­i­den­tial area well known as a crime hot spot.

With the un­used and still shut­tered Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba on the con­sid­er­a­tion list as a po­ten­tial de­ten­tion space for the grow­ing num­ber of ac­cused in cus­tody since the start of the state of emer­gency, clear­ly some el­e­ments of the an­ti-crime strat­e­gy are, of ne­ces­si­ty, be­ing in­vent­ed on the fly. But apart from the un­usu­al chris­ten­ing the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing for the long-await­ed sports fa­cil­i­ty, the lead­er­ship of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty al­so needs to fo­cus on ini­tia­tives that will lever­age the un­usu­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for law en­force­ment that is avail­able at this time. The first week of sweeps has re­sult­ed in 684 peo­ple be­ing held, 257 of them on gang-re­lat­ed of­fences. These are star­tling num­bers that will gen­er­ate a stag­ger­ing amount of pa­per­work if ro­bust cas­es are to be made against even half of those ar­rest­ed.

Hav­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the land­scape of law en­force­ment and al­tered the bal­ance of pow­er in the war against crime, it's crit­i­cal that the gov­ern­ment con­sid­er care­ful­ly the op­por­tu­ni­ty that the state of emer­gency of­fers for im­ple­ment­ing sub­stan­tive changes that will make a dif­fer­ence af­ter this tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the na­tion's con­sti­tu­tion is lift­ed. Apart from the case­work that's in­volved in press­ing charges against those that have been held, of­fi­cers should be col­lab­o­rat­ing with ex­perts ca­pa­ble of iden­ti­fy­ing, among those ar­rest­ed, those among this group who are hard­ened crim­i­nals, who might be steered from a life of crime with some guid­ance and help and who might be turned to state's ser­vice as in­for­mants in the fu­ture.

This fresh in­flux of al­leged crim­i­nals is un­like­ly to re­sult in a 100 per cent con­vic­tion rate, but it's an un­prece­dent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­fil­tra­tion and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing that should be ful­ly em­braced. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al may be tempt­ed to fol­low up on an ill-ad­vised Face­book video rant but there are stronger op­por­tu­ni­ties in so­cial me­dia for the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain what it is do­ing dur­ing the emer­gency and to get in­volved with, lis­ten­ing as well as talk­ing with the vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ties gath­ered there. That could be a spring­board for deep­er and more mean­ing­ful en­gage­ments with the com­mu­ni­ties most chal­lenged by the cur­rent lock­down and the at­ten­dant po­lice at­ten­tion.

With the el­bow room af­ford­ed by cur­rent cir­cum­stances, the Po­lice Ser­vice finds it­self as the go-to au­thor­i­ty in these crime hot spots and must take ad­van­tage of this op­por­tu­ni­ty to plant seeds of con­cil­i­a­tion and forge pos­i­tive re­la­tions in trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties. Let there be no mis­take, while boots on the ground and guns strapped to chests may be the cur­rent re­al­i­ty, in­tim­i­da­tion will not win the kind of trust that's nec­es­sary to re-es­tab­lish the po­lice ser­vice as a pri­ma­ry source of com­mu­ni­ty lead­er­ship. These are crit­i­cal so­cial mis­sions for the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (with as­sis­tance per­haps from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple) if it in­tends to sup­plant the ready temp­ta­tions of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty that have proven such fer­tile ground for the young men be­ing swept up in their num­bers over the last week.

Be­fore chas­ing off af­ter in­creased penal­ties for cur­few break­ers, the au­thor­i­ties should stay on mes­sage here and work all the an­gles to re­duce op­por­tu­ni­ties for crime in these hot spots. Such in­ter­ven­tions might be phys­i­cal, im­prov­ing street light­ing and im­ple­ment­ing video mon­i­tor­ing, for in­stance, or it might be so­cial, en­gag­ing so­cial work­ers and NGOs in se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion about the kind of in­ter­ven­tions and so­cial en­cour­age­ments that may be pos­si­ble in these chal­lenged com­mu­ni­ties now laid open by the con­sti­tu­tion­al triage cur­rent­ly in progress.