Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's con­cerns about the crime rate, which he shared in a Face­book post on Thurs­day, took a tone of re­gret, sim­i­lar to that of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher ear­li­er this week.

The com­mon thread be­tween the two lead­ers, was that sig­nif­i­cant work had been put in­to the crime fight this year, leav­ing them both dis­ap­point­ed T&T has now reg­is­tered the high­est-ever homi­cide rate.

As im­por­tant as it is for Dr Row­ley and Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher to com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic on this de­spi­ca­ble mile­stone, they have on­ly left many peo­ple more con­fused than com­fort­ed.

Dr Row­ley, in par­tic­u­lar, said he had "a gen­uine ex­pec­ta­tion that the on­go­ing na­tion­al ef­fort against vi­o­lent crime...would have seen a vis­i­ble re­duc­tion in num­ber as we go for­ward."

It is baf­fling to un­der­stand what fu­elled this con­fi­dence in the Prime Min­is­ter that enough ef­fort was be­ing put in place to see a turn­around.

We know ful­ly well that as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, he would have more in­for­ma­tion than cit­i­zens could pos­si­bly have.

What we've had though, was a read­ing of the ground. We've been to the crime scenes; heard the cries of fam­i­lies of the vic­tims; re­port­ed day af­ter day on the mur­ders, home in­va­sions, kid­nap­pings and oth­er heinous crimes; we've sought the views of hun­dreds of peo­ple and we've opened our pages and air­waves to our lead­ers to tell us what was be­ing done.

Yet, noth­ing we've heard and seen all year con­vinced cit­i­zens that the ef­forts tak­ing place in se­cret or in the open were mak­ing much of a dif­fer­ence and we've fear­less­ly told both Gov­ern­ment and the Com­mis­sion­er so in nu­mer­ous ed­i­to­ri­als and com­men­taries.

Un­like Dr Row­ley, many in the coun­try had no gen­uine ex­pec­ta­tion that the crime rate would have been any­thing oth­er than what it is now.

To take To­ba­go as an ex­am­ple - his­tor­i­cal­ly the more peace­ful of the two is­lands by far - the is­land has al­most dou­bled its mur­der rate in the last 12 months, over that of 2023.

Pub­lic out­cry has of­ten been treat­ed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds as an an­noy­ance, and those who chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment more vigourous­ly, found them­selves la­belled as Op­po­si­tion agents or an­ti-Gov­ern­ment cam­paign­ers.

When em­pa­thy and sym­pa­thy were need­ed to main­tain and strength­en what was left of pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice fol­low­ing the most griev­ous of killings, Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her line min­is­ters re­mained silent.

The promis­es made ear­ly in 2024 of more ve­hi­cles for the po­lice, CCTV cam­eras, re­cruit­ment of more of­fi­cers and an al­lo­ca­tion of over $100 mil­lion to the mil­i­tary for an­ti-crime pro­grammes, were ei­ther aban­doned or at best brought in­signif­i­cant re­wards.

Nei­ther Dr Row­ley nor Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher, there­fore, can­not ex­pect the na­tion to read­i­ly join them in ac­cept­ing their per­spec­tives that sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts were put in­to the crime fight and ex­pect a resur­gence of ef­forts by cit­i­zens to ral­ly be­hind a Po­lice Ser­vice whose com­mis­sion­er has en­gen­dered lit­tle or no con­fi­dence that she could do the job.

Cit­i­zens are des­per­ate to see the po­lice win this fight but the con­tin­ued rhetoric is do­ing lit­tle to help build that trust or put fear in the hearts of the crim­i­nal­ly mind­ed.

Dr Row­ley must take the tough de­ci­sions need­ed as a leader to en­sure a rapid de­cline in mur­ders as soon as pos­si­ble.

This, un­doubt­ed­ly, will be the most im­por­tant con­cern to cit­i­zens in the up­com­ing elec­tion year.