Four years ago, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, then op­po­si­tion leader, pre­dict­ed the down­fall of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) gov­ern­ment due to its in­abil­i­ty to get crime un­der con­trol. Row­ley al­so con­ced­ed then that spi­ralling crime had led to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) los­ing the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Dur­ing a meet­ing at the Port-of-Spain City Hall on Jan­u­ary 6, 2014, as he of­fered him­self to lead the PNM and the par­ty for re-elec­tion, Row­ley ap­pealed to the pub­lic not to be hood­winked by the PP’s at­tempt to lessen the sever­i­ty of the in­creased crime rate by blam­ing war­ring gangs for the run­away mur­ders.

For the first six days of 2014—un­der the PP's watch—16 mur­ders had been record­ed to which Row­ley said, "I can't re­call any time in this coun­try, a blood­bath tak­ing place like this week."

Row­ley en­tered of­fice on a promise to re­duce crime and erad­i­cate cor­rup­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The month of April 2019—three-and-a-half years in­to the PNM's new term in of­fice—was de­clared the blood­i­est month ever in the his­to­ry of T&T when 49 peo­ple were killed in just 30 days.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figueira claimed,"April ex­plod­ed in­to a blood­bath."

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2010 to present, some $58 bil­lion was spent by both the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and the PNM to fight crime.

In the PNM's 2015 man­i­festo ti­tled "Let’s Do This To­geth­er," the PNM de­scribed T&T as a na­tion in cri­sis.

They stat­ed that "Af­ter five years, crime re­mains the most se­ri­ous prob­lem af­fect­ing our cit­i­zens to­day, close­ly fol­lowed by cor­rup­tion, which has now reached pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­ined lev­els."

They ac­cused the UNC-led regime of fail­ing to serve the peo­ple—"They have on­ly served them­selves and their fi­nanciers," the par­ty stat­ed.

Ex­am­in­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion's record on crime, the PNM claimed "Vi­o­lent crime is out of con­trol, while white-col­lar crime, es­pe­cial­ly mon­ey laun­der­ing, bribery, cor­rup­tion and theft from the peo­ple’s purse, has reached epi­dem­ic lev­els. The mur­der to­tal has ex­ceed­ed 400 for the last two years and there has been no re­duc­tion in the mur­der rate for this year with over 250 mur­ders in the first sev­en months of 2015."

Un­der the UNC-led regime, the PNM stat­ed, T&T has been de­ter­mined by the Unit­ed Na­tions to be "the tenth most homi­ci­dal and vi­o­lent coun­try in the world, with more mur­ders per capi­ta than Iraq".

In the PNM’s 2015/2016 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion ti­tled "Restor­ing Con­fi­dence and Re­build­ing Trust: Let Us Do This To­geth­er," Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ac­knowl­edged that a re­duc­tion in crime rep­re­sent­ed the fore­most de­mand by the cit­i­zen­ry.

He said then that "Vi­o­lent crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty have ham­pered our eco­nom­ic progress. Our in­sti­tu­tions have been weak­ened. Our cit­i­zens have be­come dis­il­lu­sioned and our busi­ness sec­tor has de­vel­oped an un­healthy malaise with re­spect to new in­vest­ments and con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my."

There, how­ev­er, con­tin­ues to be run­away crime in T&T; Cit­i­zens are liv­ing in fear and on the edge and are call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to ho­n­our his promise and get crime un­der con­trol.

Man­i­festo promis­es

In its 2016 man­i­festo, the PNM ac­cused the UNC-led gov­ern­ment of be­ing an "Ab­ject fail­ure at con­trol­ling crime and en­sur­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of our cit­i­zens."

They at­trib­uted this fail­ure to the PP gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to dis­man­tle the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus put in place by the PNM dur­ing its pre­vi­ous term in of­fice and with­hold­ing sup­port for al­ready es­tab­lished ini­tia­tives. The PNM promised that if elect­ed, they would adopt a "Whole-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. All min­istries and agen­cies will thus share re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and be ac­count­able for the se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty of the State."

Promis­es made:

1. Tak­ing leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment to amend the pro­ce­dure re­lat­ing to the per­ma­nent ap­point­ment of a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and his deputies (Achieved)

2. Es­tab­lish a joint Bor­der Pro­tec­tion Agency that will man­age the se­cu­ri­ty and in­tegri­ty of T&T’s bor­ders

3. De­vel­op a Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment Pol­i­cy for T&T (Achieved)

4. Util­is­ing the Cit­i­zens’ Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme, Po­lice Youth Clubs and Cadet Force to re­duce youth crim­i­nal­i­ty (Achieved)

5. Es­tab­lish a Po­lice Ser­vice In­spec­torate

6. Im­prov­ing sci­en­tif­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tion strate­gies and pur­su­ing ISO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre

7. Part­ner with the Ju­di­cia­ry to re-en­gi­neer the struc­ture and im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem

8. Es­tab­lish a Prison Man­age­ment Pol­i­cy

9. Adopt an in­tel­li­gence-led ap­proach to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty (Achieved)

10. De­vel­op an adapt­able de­fence and se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture

On­line sta­tis­tics of mur­ders for the years 2010 to 2018

2010 - 485

2011 - 354

2012 - 383

2013 - 408

2014 - 403

2015 - 420

2016 - 463

2017 - 494

2018 - 516

Row­ley’s quotes on crime in op­po­si­tion

Jan 6, 2014—"I can't re­call any time in this coun­try, a blood­bath tak­ing place like this week."—re­fer­ring to the 16 mur­ders dur­ing the first six days of 2014 as he of­fered him­self to lead the PNM at a meet­ing at the POS City Hall.

Jan 27, 2014—"Peo­ple said they are be­gin­ning to lose faith that we could ever pull it back. We give the as­sur­an­ce we will put our hands to the tiller and steer the ship of T&T. We in the Op­po­si­tion are tak­ing steps to un­der­stand the prob­lem and pre­pare re­spons­es."—speak­ing at an Ari­ma Town Hall Meet­ing.

Oct 26, 2014—"The crim­i­nal el­e­ment has too much room to ma­noeu­vre.”—promis­ing to roll back crime as he ac­cused those in of­fice of be­ing less than hon­est with the pop­u­la­tion about the re­al sto­ry be­hind crime dur­ing the PNM Con­ven­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency.

PM's quote on crime in gov­ern­ment

Oct 6, 2015—"This Bud­get has as its largest al­lo­ca­tion, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. That is dri­ven by the chron­ic and ram­pant crim­i­nal con­duct in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We get the pain of the crimes and we have to pay the largest amount of our earn­ings on try­ing to treat crime. That is the dol­lar­is­ing of crime in T&T. This should let the pop­u­la­tion know, if ever we did not know be­fore, that crime is hav­ing a se­ri­ous ef­fect on the pop­u­la­tion of T&T."—speaks about Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­ceiv­ing the largest bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion in the 2015/2016 bud­get.

Nov 25, 2016—"It is now pret­ty nor­mal in Trinidad and To­ba­go to wake up every morn­ing and be greet­ed the first item of news that some­body has killed some­body and on many oc­ca­sions, some­body has been killed by the po­lice.” - speak­ing at the for­mal hand over of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

Nov 25, 2016—"Every fam­i­ly that los­es an in­di­vid­ual ei­ther to a crim­i­nal act or to the po­lice in an act of self-de­fence is now ex­posed to pain, an­guish, and long-suf­fer­ing and that is what our coun­try is right now."—speak­ing at the for­mal hand over of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

Nov 25, 2016—"I am par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed and some­times bor­der­ing on de­pres­sion that the Gov­ern­ment that I lead is be­ing held, quite cor­rect­ly, for the in­ef­fec­tive se­cu­ri­ty of the State that ex­ists now."—speak­ing at the for­mal hand over of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

Nov 25, 2016—"At the end of the day, it is not the teach­ers, it is not the priests, it is not the doc­tors who will be re­quired to re­spond to the un­ac­cept­able lev­el of crim­i­nal con­duct in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is first and fore­most the po­lice ser­vice and of course the wider na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus."— speak­ing at the for­mal hand over of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

Dec 19, 2016 - “The one thing we can­not do is to al­low impse to be­lieve that they have con­trol of any street or any quar­ter in this coun­try and that the State recog­nis­es that. The po­lice can­not ac­cept that and the Gov­ern­ment will not ac­cept it.” - speak­ing at the for­mal hand over of the new Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Jan 28, 2017 —"The loss of life through vi­o­lent and un­law­ful means is whol­ly un­ac­cept­able."—re­fer­ring to the nu­mer­ous mur­ders around that time.

De­cem­ber 6, 2017—"No­body in this coun­try, no­body, not man, not women, not child could present an ar­gu­ment to us in Trinidad and To­ba­go, a con­vinc­ing ar­gu­ment that we do not have a se­ri­ous crime prob­lem. We can ap­por­tion blame and rea­sons, that is aca­d­e­m­ic, but al­so no­body could ad­vance an ar­gu­ment that is be­liev­able that we do not—across Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are learn­ing—have a se­ri­ous crime prob­lem root­ed large­ly in the gang cul­ture."— con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing de­bate on the An­ti-Gang Bill.

De­cem­ber 6, 2017—"We have al­ways had a cer­tain el­e­ment of crim­i­nal con­duct in our coun­try over the decades, but in re­cent times, the last 15 years or so, with the com­ing of the drug trade, the lev­el of crim­i­nal con­duct in Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­plod­ed and has re­mained in­tractable."—con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing de­bate on the An­ti-Gang Bill.

De­cem­ber 6, 2017—"I did not hear any ar­gu­ment from the oth­er side that we do not have gangs. I did not hear any­one from the oth­er side ar­gu­ing that the gangs are not de­stroy­ing the qual­i­ty of life and threat­en­ing the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I did not hear any­one on the oth­er side say that, so I take it that they are in agree­ment with those of us on this side that we do have the gangs that we had men­tioned, whether it is 2,000 or 2,500, or what­ev­er it is; we have a lot, too many."—con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing de­bate on the An­ti-Gang Bill.

De­cem­ber 6, 2017—"Let us not pre­tend that this is a na­tion­al prob­lem, and for those of you who feel 'is a PNM prob­lem in PNM strong­holds', you are wast­ing your thought. This is a na­tion­al prob­lem, from Ce­dros to To­co, from Buc­coo to Care­nage."—con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing de­bate on the An­ti-Gang Bill.

De­cem­ber 6, 2017—"You have friends, you have moth­ers, you have sis­ters, you have com­mu­ni­ties. You are MPs, you rep­re­sent 29,000 peo­ple. And you want to al­low crime to flour­ish to cam­paign in 2020? I do not be­lieve it, but that is what it is. I im­plore you tonight, put that aside, let us come to­geth­er in the fight against crime."—con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing de­bate on the An­ti-Gang Bill.

Ju­ly 12, 2018—"We are not con­sid­er­ing that at this time, we do not see it as an ef­fec­tive way of chang­ing what is hap­pen­ing. A state of emer­gency will not nec­es­sar­i­ly give us the se­cu­ri­ty that we are look­ing for. There'll be neg­a­tive de­vel­op­ments on the econ­o­my and that would in it­self cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment for fur­ther growth of crim­i­nal con­duct."—de­nies Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing a State of Emer­gency dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing.

May 4, 2019—"There was a time when vi­o­lent gun crimes were in­ci­dents which oc­curred on­ly in cer­tain parts of the coun­try. Over the last decade, with the in­flow and avail­abil­i­ty of firearms through­out this small coun­try and the free move­ment of crim­i­nals in all our com­mu­ni­ties, no place is be­yond the in­ci­dents and no com­mu­ni­ty is im­mune to the ef­fects of this na­tion­al plague."— com­mu­ni­cat­ed via text re­gard­ing the May 3 killings at Care­nage.

May 4, 2019—"This di­et of vi­o­lence and lots of an­gry peo­ple mean that the job of law en­force­ment is get­ting no eas­i­er and the pain and trau­ma con­stant­ly re­mind us of our own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties."—com­mu­ni­cat­ed via text re­gard­ing the May 3 killings at Care­nage.

Crim­i­nol­o­gists

Asked to pro­vide ex­pert in­sight in­to the cur­rent crime wave af­fect­ing T&T, crim­i­nol­o­gist Re­nee Cum­mings said per­pe­tra­tors and po­ten­tial per­pe­tra­tors are ex­ploit­ing the low de­tec­tion rate which has been ex­cep­tion­al­ly low for over a decade.

She said, "The de­tec­tion rate re­flects the brand iden­ti­ty of a law en­force­ment agency. The busi­ness of law en­force­ment is the re­tail­ing of de­ter­rence.

"How­ev­er, the mes­sage be­ing sent is one of im­puni­ty. The po­lice must de­liv­er a re­al time, best prac­tice, homi­cide-re­duc­tion strat­e­gy; aug­ment­ed with a co­or­di­nat­ed, com­pre­hen­sive, da­ta-dri­ven, na­tion­al vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy; com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven and sus­tain­able."

Pressed to say why suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions seemed not to be able to get a han­dle on crime, she re­spond­ed, "The ap­proach has nev­er been sci­en­tif­ic, mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary, mul­ti-sys­temic, ev­i­dence-based, trau­ma-in­formed, vic­tim-cen­tered and best prac­tice.

"Homi­cide re­duc­tion must be a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty. Gun­fire is now a fa­mil­iar re­frain in com­mu­ni­ties. In­ter­ven­tions must be de­signed to ad­dress in­ter-gen­er­a­tional trau­ma; mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional rage, free-float­ing anger, anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, and Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) in fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties, class­rooms, and work­places.

"Gun vi­o­lence trau­ma of­ten turns in­to men­tal, emo­tion­al and be­hav­iour­al dis­or­ders. Chil­dren ex­posed to vi­o­lence, crime, and abuse are more like­ly to en­gage in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and we are liv­ing that re­al­i­ty."

Asked to of­fer rec­om­men­da­tions on what more could be done, Cum­mings said:

•Time to bring sci­en­tif­ic in­tegri­ty to polic­ing.

•En­hanced di­a­logue, en­gage­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trust be­tween the po­lice and com­mu­ni­ties are al­so re­quired. •There must be a strong fo­cus on com­mu­ni­ty col­lab­o­ra­tion in crime pre­ven­tion.

•Pro­mote in­no­va­tion, de­sign ev­i­dence-based pro­grammes, adopt and im­ple­ment sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous and ac­tion­able crime and vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion strate­gies that al­so fo­cus on de­sis­tance, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, and restora­tive jus­tice.

Figueira: Crime politi­cised in T&T

Al­so of­fer­ing his thoughts on the mat­ter, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said, "In T&T, crime is politi­cised where a spe­cif­ic race is pro­filed as crim­i­nal and crim­ino­genic and the rest are vic­tims of this race. Politi­cised crime and the vic­ti­mol­o­gy of this pol­i­tics is a vot­er mo­bil­i­sa­tion in­stru­ment in gen­er­al elec­tions. All ac­tions tak­en by rul­ing politi­cians are framed by pol­i­tics, what is po­lit­i­cal­ly prof­itable, what is a po­lit­i­cal li­a­bil­i­ty and what is po­lit­i­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble. This is the prime re­al­i­ty."

Figueira added, "The on­ly way in­ter­ven­tions framed and launched by politi­cians and mem­bers of the huge, cost­ly na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus will im­pact crime, es­pe­cial­ly gun vi­o­lence, is if these in­ter­ven­tions are the prod­uct of an un­der­stand­ing of re­al­i­ty on the ground.

"It is not what you want re­al­i­ty to be, not what you say re­al­i­ty is. It is what re­al­i­ty on the ground tells you it is and the on­ly way you will learn this re­al­i­ty is to be or­gan­ic to it, to be one with it."

Figueira was crit­i­cal of cur­rent in­ter­ven­tions as he said, "The in­ter­ven­tions have all failed to date be­cause there are fil­ters that re­move blocks of re­al­i­ty on the ground as it fil­ters up­wards to the per­sons wield­ing state pow­er.

"This cre­ates what they say is re­al­i­ty on the ground, but this is their re­al­i­ty and all the in­ter­ven­tions they de­vise are their in­ter­ven­tions, not what re­al­i­ty on the ground de­mands.

"They are con­struct­ed to fail, ex­pen­sive fail­ures in blood, car­nage and de­stroyed lives and fam­i­lies. Be­cause of this sys­temic fail­ure, the ground sets the agen­da and the state agen­cies re­act per­pet­u­al­ly play­ing catch up with the ground. There is no pro-ac­tion by the state agen­cies…on­ly re­ac­tion and they speak the lan­guage of re­ac­tion and fail­ure as the use of crime sup­pres­sion."

Figueira said the mur­der toll from the first decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry to present was the most po­tent in­di­ca­tion of re­ac­tion, which he de­scribed as "A hold­ing ac­tion rather than pro-ac­tion, where it is ap­par­ent that the ground and fac­tors on the ground con­tin­ue to dri­ve the mur­der toll, not state in­ter­ven­tion."

He said the on­go­ing gan­ja wars in T&T since its es­ca­la­tion in the first decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry to this day and its im­pact on the mur­der toll was a les­son in pol­i­tics.

Figueira added, "Clear­ly, the gan­ja wars are the prod­uct of pro­hi­bi­tion of the plant, as it has failed to re­strict de­mand as de­mand has ex­plod­ed but sup­ply is lag­ging be­hind. The so­lu­tion to end the gan­ja wars and im­me­di­ate­ly de­crease the mur­der toll is to le­galise the plant. That is what the re­al­i­ty on the ground says."