We sup­port any and all ef­forts to re­duce the lev­el of crime in this coun­try.

In­deed, even though the re­cent State of Emer­gency (SoE) an­nounced on De­cem­ber 30 last year took many of us by sur­prise, with an ex­ten­sion lat­er grant­ed by Par­lia­ment on Jan­u­ary 13, we, like all right-think­ing na­tion­als, would have still pledged our sup­port in the hope of see­ing a turn­around in our re­cent for­tunes and hav­ing crime brought un­der con­trol.

How­ev­er, we are not about to jump on any T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) band­wag­on in la­belling the SoE, which end­ed on Sun­day, a suc­cess, al­though it is pleas­ing to hear from the po­lice high com­mand that there was a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes over the pe­ri­od.

Suc­cess for us must go be­yond the round­ing up of more than 4,000 cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers, on­ly to hear at the end of the day that on­ly a mere frac­tion of them could ac­tu­al­ly be charged for any re­al crime.

It has to be based on an un­equiv­o­cal feel­ing of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty by the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens—both in­side and out­side of their homes and work­places. For law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, gen­uine suc­cess in tam­ing the crime scourge means walk­ing freely with­out fear and not hav­ing to avoid tra­vers­ing cer­tain ar­eas, as well as hav­ing the con­fi­dence that Gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment of­fi­cers are in charge of our streets.

But alas, this is cur­rent­ly not the case. It is hard to trust and be­lieve your neigh­bour, far less the per­sons who present them­selves as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

To make mat­ters worse, we are now in the throes of elec­tion sea­son, with po­lit­i­cal par­ties ea­ger for one-up­man­ship promis­ing the sun, moon and stars on the is­sue of tack­ling crime. But can any of these promis­es re­al­ly yield the de­sired re­sult, es­pe­cial­ly in an en­vi­ron­ment in which there is more than enough blame to share around?

We there­fore call on all po­lit­i­cal as­pi­rants and par­ties to stop point­ing fin­gers at each oth­er and to turn the mir­ror on them­selves, while ask­ing and an­swer­ing for the ben­e­fit of all, ‘What can I do to help re­solve this na­tion­al cri­sis?’

We note that of the 4,038 peo­ple ar­rest­ed dur­ing the SoE pe­ri­od, on­ly about 1,590 were ac­tu­al­ly charged with of­fences. It means we have de­tained on­ly to re­lease some very an­gry folks num­ber­ing no less than 2,500 who may still feel hard done by the sys­tem.

For the short term, at the very least, this makes it hard­er for the TTPS and the rest of us who end up in their crosshairs, even as they seek to rein­te­grate and pick up the pieces of their lives.

With that said, praise must be giv­en to the in­tre­pid men and women in uni­form, who toiled for 105 days and nights un­der the SoE and were in­volved in a to­tal of 5,192 op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing 36,000 search­es of homes, ve­hi­cles and spaces over the pe­ri­od.

It is al­so en­cour­ag­ing to hear that homi­cides re­port­ed­ly fell from 160 in 2024 to 113 in 2025.

But one homi­cide re­mains one too many and even if rob­beries moved from 750 in 2024 to 475 this year, we must nev­er lose sight of the mag­ni­tude of the chal­lenge that still lies be­fore us and stymies any procla­ma­tion of T&T as any­thing oth­er than a crim­i­nal’s par­adise.