With each pass­ing day, it is be­com­ing abun­dant­ly clear that we are in the mid­dle of a dead­ly mur­der spi­ral that will eas­i­ly sur­pass last year’s mur­der toll. As­sas­si­na­tions or hits are tak­ing place on the main roads in broad day­light putting chil­dren and in­no­cent cit­i­zens in the line of fire. The col­lat­er­al dam­age is in­creas­ing. There ap­pear to be no lim­its on what can hap­pen, or when and where. Gun­men are around schools or pass­ing through schools. Last week the child in the back seat mirac­u­lous­ly es­caped as the fa­ther was mur­dered. A child is bat­tling for life, from a bul­let to the head. Home in­va­sions are on the in­crease.Cit­i­zens are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly alarmed as there ap­pear to be no safe spaces. This is erod­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence and those cit­i­zens with op­tions will vote with their feet.

Ac­cord­ing to the anec­do­tal ev­i­dence, some are al­ready mi­grat­ing. Those em­i­grat­ing could make it any­where, the best and the bright­est young minds. Those study­ing abroad will be en­cour­aged to re­main abroad by par­ents who are fear­ful of the crime lev­el and the eco­nom­ic out­look. Even­tu­al­ly, busi­ness­es and their own­ers will move too. We un­der­stand that it will take time to cor­rect the law­less­ness and the vi­o­lent crime sit­u­a­tion. But it re­quires more than plat­form rhetoric. It re­quires an all-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach to ex­er­cise the State’s mo­nop­oly on pow­er with­in con­sti­tu­tion­al pa­ra­me­ters. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion seems un­able to co­or­di­nate its cab­i­net mem­bers, far less the var­i­ous arms of the State.

Af­ter pub­licly call­ing on the COP to pro­vide an ex­pla­na­tion in the Brent Thomas mat­ter, Min­is­ter Hinds glibly tells the coun­try that he re­ceived “a full oral ex­pla­na­tion” with­out dis­clos­ing any in­for­ma­tion to the coun­try.

In sharp con­trast, the Bar­ba­dos At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Home Af­fairs, the up­mar­ket ver­sion of T&T’s Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty un­der­stood his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the coun­try and gave a full state­ment in Par­lia­ment. He ex­plained how the Bar­ba­dos po­lice re­spond­ed to the TTPS in­for­mal re­quest ad­mit­ting that the con­duct of the Bar­ba­dos po­lice had fall­en short “of ap­plic­a­ble le­gal norms.”

The Bar­ba­dos AG was clear­ly em­bar­rassed by the whole af­fair and sought to mit­i­gate the judge’s char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Mr Thomas’s de­ten­tion as ab­duc­tion and lim­it the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age to the Bar­ba­dos jus­tice sys­tem. Mean­while, the T&T AG seems des­tined to shred any rep­u­ta­tion he may have be­fore as­sum­ing pub­lic of­fice in­di­cat­ing a pref­er­ence for a favourable judg­ment in the court of pub­lic opin­ion rather than wait­ing for a de­ci­sion in the court of law. Ig­nor­ing the sub ju­dice rule, the AG read from an af­fi­davit to de­fend and mute pub­lic crit­i­cism of the po­lice ac­tion in the Brent Thomas case.

From a poor mem­o­ry, a miss­ing file, and de­fault judg­ments, the slop­pi­ness con­tin­ues. Like oth­ers be­fore, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er made a pub­lic com­mit­ment to re­duce the rate of vi­o­lence even giv­ing a date by which this re­duc­tion would oc­cur. That now seems both an emp­ty boast and a fool’s er­rand. This is no tea par­ty. Lead­er­ship is made of stern­er stuff and Min­is­ter Hinds is a poor ex­am­ple in this re­gard.

Whilst the prime min­is­ter and his Cab­i­net may say that want to solve the crime prob­lem, none seem pre­pared to un­der­take ei­ther the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fix­ing the prob­lem or to take ac­tions that would be­gin to do so. As the Ital­ian po­et Dante point­ed out sev­en hun­dred and fifty years ago, “The se­cret of get­ting things done is to act.” We might add, sen­si­bly.