Shal­iza Has­sanali

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Ian Ramd­hanie is urg­ing the coun­try to brace for an in­crease in crime once the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few is re­laxed. Ramd­hanie is al­so warn­ing cit­i­zens that the ar­rests of gang lead­ers dur­ing the state of emer­gency can lead to col­lat­er­al dam­age when the coun­try re­turns to nor­mal­cy. Ramd­hanie, a pro­gramme man­ag­er and lec­tur­er at the In­sti­tute of Crim­i­nol­o­gy and Pub­lic Safe­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, said the un­ex­pect­ed or un­in­ten­tion­al loss­es were like­ly to take place when the state of emer­gency is lift­ed, which the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice must be pre­pared to deal with. With the lock­down of so-called hot-spot ar­eas came crime dis­place­ment, Ramd­hanie said.

"They (crim­i­nals and gang lead­ers) will lie low for a few days but will move to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion. The po­lice have to ex­pect this and put mech­a­nisms in place to deal with this dis­place­ment. When they ar­rest gang lead­ers, new ones will emerge. So the coun­try can brace for an in­crease in crime." Asked if this can lead to col­lat­er­al dam­age, Ramd­hanie replied, curt­ly, "Of course it will. As soon as things light­en up, we can ex­pect an in­crease in drug traf­fick­ing and along­side drug traf­fick­ing will be homi­cides and shoot­ings. It will go hand-in-hand. The po­lice ser­vice should ex­pect this. They have to put things in place to coun­ter­act this."

Ramd­hanie said re­lax­ing the cur­few hours would send a mes­sage that things had cooled down and "you might see a resur­gence." He said once the cur­few hours were amend­ed, the ar­rest rate would drop, and so, too, would the en­thu­si­asm and morale of po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers. Stat­ing that crime hap­pened in cy­cles, Ramd­hanie said though the mur­der rate had sig­nif­i­cant­ly fall­en in the last 14 days, once the state of emer­gency was lift­ed, "There is go­ing to be an up­surge in crime at some point in time. It's a mat­ter of how long we can pre­vent it or how long we can keep it down." He said the longer T&T faced a state of emer­gency, the more the econ­o­my, coun­try, Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness sec­tors would suf­fer.

"Even­tu­al­ly you will have to give way and then you will see the resur­gence." Ramd­hanie said two sea­sons, Christ­mas and Car­ni­val, were when crim­i­nals went on the at­tack. These sea­sons are just around the cor­ner. De­scrib­ing the ar­rests of gang lead­ers as short-term mea­sures of tack­ling crime, Ramd­hanie said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to have medi­um- and long-term ini­tia­tives in place. Among the medi­um- and long-term rec­om­men­da­tions Ramd­hanie pitched was an in­crease in po­lice de­tec­tion rate which is be­tween ten and 20 per cent and com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing units.

"The Gov­ern­ment has to be cre­ative in find­ing ways of get­ting in­for­ma­tion from mem­bers of the pub­lic. This is of ut­most im­por­tance." Not­ing that the pub­lic con­fi­dence in the lo­cal po­lice ser­vice was sad­ly lack­ing, Ramd­hanie said the in­sti­tu­tion was a vi­tal tool in restor­ing the strength of law and or­der. "Com­mu­ni­ties and po­lice need to work to­geth­er. The po­lice have to show more re­spect to com­mu­ni­ties for them to get re­spect." Ramd­hanie said gang in­fil­tra­tion was key with po­lice of­fi­cers work­ing as in­form­ers, un­der­cov­er cops, spies and moles to dis­man­tle the gangs.

Ramd­hanie said his most wor­ry­ing con­cern dur­ing this state of emer­gency was that the rights of cit­i­zens were not in­fringed and the emer­gency tri­bunal func­tions prop­er­ly. "An­oth­er con­cern is that they go af­ter the big fish as well as of­fend­ers of white col­lar crime." Com­ment­ing on the re­cent ar­rest of Sel­wyn "Robo­cop" Alex­is, Ramd­hanie said a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion was re­quired to es­tab­lish how Alex­is came in­to pos­ses­sion of US$20 and a cell­phone while in cus­tody at the Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion. "Who­ev­er (po­lice of­fi­cers) ac­cept­ed him (Alex­is) at the sta­tion need to ac­count."