Six mur­ders in less than 24 hours is an alarm­ing sta­tis­tic on any day. T&T has been hav­ing too many such days with gun­men un­hin­dered in their blood­thirsty as­sign­ments.

The in­creas­ing fre­quen­cy of these killings, record­ed as the coun­try sped past its lat­est grim mile­stone of 200 mur­ders so far this year, on­ly adds to cit­i­zens’ lev­els of fear and trau­ma.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s many state­ments about a re­lent­less push by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal strong­holds do lit­tle to dis­pel the per­cep­tion that law and or­der are on the los­ing end of this bat­tle.

There are now just weeks left be­fore the dead­line the CoP set for a crime re­duc­tion ex­pires and so far, the da­ta and dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ences across the coun­try sug­gest Ms Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s tar­get will not be met.

The so far fu­tile search for mea­sur­able crime-fight­ing re­sults, com­bined with da­ta on vi­o­lent crime that is head­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion, weighs heav­i­ly on all right-think­ing cit­i­zens.

The re­al­i­sa­tion of more than 200 lives tak­en in just four months is hard enough to process. Even tougher to con­tem­plate are the faces be­hind those num­bers—not just the vic­tims who suf­fered un­time­ly and vi­o­lent deaths but the many peo­ple in their cir­cles of fam­i­ly and friends—re­al lives bru­tal­ly im­pact­ed by T&T’s out-of-con­trol mur­der rate.

Con­sid­er the gut-wrench­ing cir­cum­stances of the lat­est killings. Among the vic­tims, a young man killed when he went to vis­it his five-month-old son in Diego Mar­tin; three men gunned down as they limed at a San­ta Cruz bar; a St Ann’s res­i­dent shot dead at his home; and a pen­sion­er who be­came To­ba­go’s fifth mur­der vic­tim for the year.

It is im­por­tant not to lose sight of the com­pelling hu­man el­e­ments in all these cas­es, as well as the oth­ers over the years that have made this coun­try in­to one of the dead­liest lo­ca­tions in the Caribbean.

This is the re­al­i­ty that has to be faced every day and it dom­i­nates dis­cus­sions on so­cial me­dia and talk ra­dio and is the most fre­quent sub­ject of let­ters to news­pa­pers.

Lead­ers, who, based on their pro­fes­sion­al and po­lit­i­cal port­fo­lios, are on the front­lines of this fight against crime must ac­cept they are ac­count­able to cit­i­zens. They must do bet­ter.

State­ments craft­ed by com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ists and the oc­ca­sion­al off-the-cuff com­ments from elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives no longer work. This na­tion has had its fill of plat­i­tudes and un­kept promis­es.

The pub­lic good­will the CoP still en­joys won’t last much longer if she con­tin­ues to avoid pub­lic en­gage­ments. She is now a few months in­to her tenure at the TTPS helm and is yet to host a me­dia con­fer­ence to ad­dress the wors­en­ing crime wave.

As for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who is al­so the Laven­tille West MP, one of the coun­try’s crime hotspots, he needs to demon­strate he tru­ly un­der­stands his role in the “fight for the soul of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He can­not dis­tance him­self—he is on the front­lines of the bat­tle to re­store safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in this coun­try and he must show more com­pas­sion and com­mit­ment as he goes about his min­is­te­r­i­al du­ties.

It is time for fresh ideas and dif­fer­ent strate­gies to deal with crime.