Ira Math­ur

I see the most im­por­tant de­ci­sion made at the lev­el of Cari­com is that we need to talk about crime in an up­com­ing sym­po­sium.

A sur­vey post­ed to the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) chat group placed Trinidad as the sixth most ‘crim­i­nal’ coun­try in the world (The World of Sta­tis­tics). In or­der of crim­i­nal coun­tries: Venezuela, Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, South Africa, Hon­duras, and Trinidad. Fol­low­ing T&T, its Guyana, Syr­ia, So­ma­lia and Ja­maica. We can’t nit­pick.

Last year (2022) was ‘our most mur­der­ous’ with 600 homi­cides. Sym­po­sium peo­ple, we know that much right?

For decades we’ve seen the num­bers rise. It’s all we’ve talked about. All we read when we open the news­pa­pers. You will read about it in this and all the oth­er pa­pers to­day. An­oth­er vi­o­lent death. What will the sym­po­sium tell us that we don’t know al­ready?

Homi­cide re­port­ing is as nor­mal to us as the north­ern range, as fa­mil­iar as crick­et and Car­ni­val, its rise as pre­dictable as the tides, its con­ti­nu­ity as sure as poui and ex­am sea­son. It’s sad­ly part of who we are.

Maybe it be­gan with Ran­dolph Bur­roughs in the ’80s (the in­fa­mous CoP, dubbed ‘the fox’ who ran the lethal fly­ing squad).

Jour­nal­ist Dar­ren Ba­haw re­called that time for News­day in an ar­ti­cle on No­vem­ber 8, 2020.

“Back then, the man who sat in the com­mis­sion­er’s chair, the Ko­jak-style Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, was iden­ti­fied as the mas­ter­mind be­hind a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise which un­leashed the scourge of co­caine from Colom­bian car­tels on the streets and safe traf­fick­ing routes for mar­i­jua­na grow­ers.

“Wit­ness­es, in­clud­ing po­lice who tes­ti­fied in se­cret be­fore the com­mis­sion of en­quiry es­tab­lished in April 1984, claimed Bur­roughs, to­geth­er with a band of un­touch­ables, apt­ly named the Fly­ing Squad, were linked to drug barons Dole Chadee, Naim Naya Ali, Chaitran Gayah, Adel­la Moses, Ted­dy “Mice” Khan, Ho­sein “Be­ta­lal” Al­ladin and oth­er vi­o­lent drug traf­fick­ers, as well as cor­rupt ju­di­cial of­fi­cers.

“They were pro­tect­ed by the CoP, and ri­vals were si­lenced as co­caine crept through the cor­ri­dor of pow­er and even the nos­trils of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters.

“All of them are now dead, some were mur­dered, ex­e­cut­ed by the State, and miss­ing at sea, but the stains of cor­rup­tion in the po­lice ser­vice re­mained and seem to have in­fil­trat­ed the ranks of the de­fence force.”

Bril­liant re­port­ing.

Dur­ing that time, a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry pro­duced the Scott Drug Re­port. That re­port was key be­cause it took us to the land of no re­turn.

Maybe it be­gan there, but it’s grown so huge that no CoP has been able to curb the can­cer of this bloat­ed blood-suck­ing mon­ster un­leashed in Bur­roughs time.

The drug trade had al­ready metas­ta­sised in­to the cor­ri­dors of pow­er. CoP af­ter CoP strug­gled even as we be­came en­trenched as a trans­ship­ment point for drugs. Jules Bernard, Noor Mo­hammed, Hilton Guy, Ever­ald Snag­gs, Trevor Paul, James Philbert, Dwayne Gibbs, Stephen Williams, Gary Grif­fith, and Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob tried.

And now we’ve pinned our hopes on a woman—Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher—think­ing she would do what the men haven’t been able to do, curb crime. But sad­ly, as much as I am in her cor­ner, she won’t be able to. We know the prob­lem. It’s un­touch­able be­cause to go too close to it is to court a bul­let to the skull. It’s in­ter­na­tion­al and big­ger than our tiny vil­lage is­land state.

How is our CoP, as won­der­ful as she is, to stop Eu­rope and the US from us­ing us as a safe har­bour to trans­port drugs in ex­change for the arms they send to us in abun­dance? Our Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter tells us 12,000 il­le­gal guns are at large (87 per cent of mur­ders are due to firearms).

How do suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments, know­ing that il­le­gal arms are in the hands of gangs (now an es­ti­mat­ed army of 40,000), stop the Cepep hand­outs know­ing that gang lead­ers can or­der a shoot-up any­time in the mid­dle of town?

Who bells the lo­cal fi­nanciers?

Can our Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion work to­geth­er for an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion? Not hap­pen­ing.

Can our Ju­di­cia­ry get its act to­geth­er? Scant sign of that.

We face a crime mon­ster with this lethal cock­tail of neo-colo­nial arms and drugs ex­ploita­tion by the West, in­com­pe­tent gov­ern­ments, self­ish op­po­si­tions, and an opaque po­lice force.

We’ve talked about crime to death. A sym­po­sium on courage to act is re­quired.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in the cat­e­go­ry of Non­fic­tion ( 2023).