For the year thus far, Trinidad and To­ba­go has record­ed 263 mur­ders.

For the same pe­ri­od, we have al­so lost 1,203 peo­ple to COVID-19.

On the one hand, the mur­der fig­ures rep­re­sent the fact that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with im­puni­ty while snatch­ing in­no­cent lives. On the oth­er, it re­veals just how COVID-19 con­tin­ues to rav­age so­ci­ety, wreak­ing hav­oc and throw­ing fam­i­lies in­to mourn­ing over loved ones whom they nev­er got a chance to say good­bye to.

Were it not for the pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the coun­try’s COVID re­sponse, how­ev­er, a crime de­bate would have been atop cit­i­zens’ minds at this time.

A State of Emer­gency was im­ple­ment­ed ear­li­er this year to help curb the spread of the virus. For a time, the mea­sure seemed to al­so have as­sist­ed with keep­ing mur­ders down, since it al­so lim­it­ed the move­ment of the killers. In the past weeks, how­ev­er, the killings have picked up again and just last week­end alone, po­lice were kept busy as five peo­ple lost their lives by the gun in Cen­tral Trinidad. Even more con­cern­ing is that all of this is hap­pen­ing un­der the con­tin­u­ing SoE and 9 pm-5 am cur­few.

Just re­cent­ly, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Crime Stop­pers, launched a re­newed dri­ve to rid the streets of il­le­gal guns.

Con­cerned about the de­vel­op­ing sit­u­a­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds met on the week­end with law en­force­ment heads on what is hap­pen­ing. It is a pity the Min­is­ter has al­lowed the crime sit­u­a­tion to get to this point be­fore de­mand­ing an­swers and ac­tion from the law en­force­ment heads the cur­rent spate of crime rav­aging the coun­try. But bet­ter late than nev­er.

This is not just about gang war­fare — in­no­cent peo­ple are be­ing killed. On Sat­ur­day, a busi­ness­man was killed in cold blood by ban­dits in front of his fam­i­ly.

Some­thing is go­ing des­per­ate­ly wrong.

At this time, the au­thor­i­ties need to get their act to­geth­er. It would be good for the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to tell the coun­try just what he has done since as­sum­ing of­fice to en­sure that when the SoE and cur­few ends, since it can­not stay in­def­i­nite­ly, cit­i­zens are kept safe.

Right now, ris­ing crime must of ne­ces­si­ty al­so earn some na­tion­al at­ten­tion, since the re­al­i­ty is that one life lost be­cause of il­le­gal guns and crime is too many.

So while we join the ap­peal of the au­thor­i­ties for cit­i­zens to end their vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy, we al­so join with all those mourn­ing the lives of loved ones lost to gun crime. It is time that some­thing tan­gi­ble is done about crime. It can’t be that at a time when cit­i­zens are strug­gling with the fall­out from COVID-19, that those with the where­with­al to pur­chase or ac­quire guns il­le­gal­ly to pur­sue ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ty can con­tin­ue to ter­rorise the pop­u­la­tion.

The cur­rent re­al­i­ty is that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens now fear that they could be the next tar­get of crim­i­nal el­e­ments op­er­at­ing with im­puni­ty, with­out fear of the law, or fear they will be caught and ul­ti­mate­ly suf­fer the con­se­quences of their ac­tions. Need­less, to say, we await the re­sponse from law en­force­ment agen­cies.