Among the tal­ly of the coun­try's most leg­endary ca­lyp­soes is The Mighty Sniper's Por­trait of Trinidad, which sweet­ly belts out the open­ing line, "Trinidad is my land, and of it I am proud and glad, but I can't un­der­stand, why some peo­ple does talk it bad."

As Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month closed yes­ter­day, we were hard-pressed to view Sniper's lyrics as still rel­e­vant to­day, par­tic­u­lar­ly when, as he goes on to say, "They does talk some non­sense, me eh know whey dey do­ing it for, bout so much vi­o­lence, man yuh would swear that we fight­ing war."

Sniper won the Ca­lyp­so Crown in 1965 with this song, at a time when it was fair to de­scribe T&T as a par­adise.

To­day, the por­trait of T&T has gross­ly changed.

Fif­teen mur­ders last week took the mur­der toll be­yond 500 on Sun­day and as of last evening, it stood at 509.

With two months left in the year, at this mo­men­tum, T&T is like­ly to cross the high­est mur­der toll in the coun­try's his­to­ry, the grim 550 reached in 2008.

The pic­ture the Mighty Sniper paint­ed so beau­ti­ful­ly back then can bare­ly be seen any­more.

The por­trait of T&T to­day is one of ram­pant, in­dis­crim­i­nate shoot­ings of­ten with mul­ti­ple vic­tims in broad day­light, with the mur­der­ers car­ing lit­tle about be­ing recog­nised.

That por­trait is al­so one in which chil­dren and women are be­ing bru­tal­ly gunned down by weapons so pow­er­ful some vic­tims are left un­recog­nis­able.

The por­trait to­day is one in which cal­lous killers seek to make a state­ment by cut­ting their vic­tim's bod­ies in­to pieces, plac­ing them in garbage bags and toss­ing them in­to a swamp and where tra­di­tion­al crime hotspots are no more clear­ly de­fined as killings oc­cur across nu­mer­ous com­mu­ni­ties.

The por­trait of T&T to­day is one in which the de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of se­ri­ous crimes are woe­ful­ly low as the TTPS re­mains with­out a sub­stan­tive leader.

The por­trait T&T is paint­ed black, every day.

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day recog­nised the psy­che of the na­tion as one of "hope­less­ness which is in­creas­ing with each re­port of more bru­tal and grue­some at­tacks."

How­ev­er, DO­MA took en­cour­age­ment and in­spi­ra­tion from act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob's ad­vice to his of­fi­cers not to sur­ren­der in the face of the crime surge. DO­MA said a sim­i­lar sense of de­ter­mi­na­tion and lead­er­ship must be prac­tised by each cit­i­zen in pro­tect­ing them­selves, their fam­i­lies and their com­mu­ni­ties. It point­ed to a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TTPS it said had mo­ti­vat­ed of­fi­cers and led to an im­prove­ment in the crime sit­u­a­tion in down­town Port-of-Spain.

DO­MA be­lieves this ap­proach, if adopt­ed na­tion­wide, can make a dif­fer­ence.

While we ad­mire DO­MA's op­ti­mism, we are not so eas­i­ly as­sured.

The poli­cies, con­ver­sa­tions, de­bates and hope ex­pressed by those in au­thor­i­ty have not trans­lat­ed in­to an ac­tu­al re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes and while the gains high­light­ed by DO­MA are laud­able, it will take a lot more to con­vince us the pic­ture will change any­time soon.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil met yes­ter­day and now plans to put more joint pa­trols on the streets and use a wider net­work of busi­ness CCTV cam­eras to de­tect and fight crime.

With the odds stacked against us, we can on­ly hope these mea­sures are enough to re­duce the rapid in­crease in heinous crimes be­fore the por­trait of Trinidad be­comes com­plete­ly un­recog­nis­able.