Shal­iza?Has­sanali

?An­gered by the es­ca­lat­ing crime rate, es­pe­cial­ly do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed mur­ders in the last month, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last night called on women to choose their male com­pan­ions more wise­ly.

Row­ley was speak­ing dur­ing the first in a se­ries of 14 Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter pub­lic meet­ings at the am­phithe­atre of the Mal­oney Shop­ping Mall, when he re­ferred to spate of killings of women in re­cent times.

With the killing of Ja­mil­ia DeReve­naux at Movi­eTowne on Sun­day night still fresh on the pub­lic's mind, Row­ley first knocked the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice for its lack of ur­gency in de­liv­er­ing on a bet­ter de­tec­tion rate to over­all crime and mur­ders in par­tic­u­lar.

"If a crime is to be com­mit­ted, in­vari­ably, the po­lice may not know it is to be com­mit­ted and more of­ten than not the po­lice would on­ly know af­ter the crime has been com­mit­ted," he said.

Point­ing out that ap­prox­i­mate­ly one third of the mur­ders in the last month were do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed is­sues. The PM asked what the role of the state/TTPS was in pre­vent­ing these sort of crimes.

He said the ill-fat­ed do­mes­tic cas­es usu­al­ly end with women in strained or dif­fi­cult re­la­tion­ships, forc­ing the state to in­ter­vene to put a re­strain­ing or­der against the part­ner and this has been cre­at­ing a ba­sis for vi­o­lent crimes.

"You called on the Prime Min­is­ter to do some­thing about crime. I am not in your bed­room, I am not in your choice of men," he said.

The PM said women have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pick those they as­so­ciate with wise­ly and should know when to get out of a re­la­tion­ship. He said when this hap­pens, the po­lice must then go the ex­tra mile to en­sure there is de­tec­tion if the any­thing gets out of hand.

"In the ab­sence of de­tec­tion, those who would or­di­nar­i­ly be law-abid­ing have an in­cen­tive to be­come law break­ers," the PM said.

He al­so lashed out at the rogue el­e­ments in the po­lice ser­vice, say­ing there must be a lev­el of in­tol­er­ance for this type of be­hav­iour. He said Par­lia­ment has giv­en act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams the au­thor­i­ty to man­age the ser­vice and he is re­spon­si­ble for root­ing out the rogue el­e­ments.

He added, "As Prime Min­is­ter, I can­not dic­tate to the po­lice how to treat with cit­i­zens. Like you, I too am watch­ing with anger at some of the things I am see­ing. I have not opened my mouth," Row­ley said.

He said the last thing he wants to do is fur­ther de­mor­alise the TTPS.

"When it comes to a sit­u­a­tion where the pop­u­la­tion fraid po­lice be­cause of their be­hav­iour, we are go­ing to lose this war."