The shoot­ing deaths of four men in Black Rock, To­ba­go, on Monday that took the is­land’s mur­der count be­yond the 14 reg­is­tered for 2023 was an­oth­er dis­tress­ing sign of how far we’ve fall­en in re­la­tion to law and or­der.

To­ba­go had al­ways been the more peace­ful of the two is­lands, due to its close fam­i­ly ties and low tol­er­ance for deca­dence. But the tides have been turn­ing with the rise in gang ac­tiv­i­ty in a place that des­per­ate­ly needs to dis­tin­guish it­self from the kinds of crimes we’ve be­come ac­cus­tomed to in Trinidad to pre­serve and pro­mote its tourism econ­o­my.

Late­ly, though, the math has just not been adding up, as mur­ders per capi­ta in To­ba­go now ex­ceed those in Trinidad, al­though just mar­gin­al­ly, based on the last pop­u­la­tion count giv­en by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice in June 2023 puts T&T’s pop­u­la­tion at just over 1,367,000, with To­ba­go ac­count­ing for around 60,000 in­hab­i­tants.

Com­pared to Trinidad, with 302 mur­ders this year, To­ba­go has had 16 homi­cides so far this year, which is more mur­ders per capi­ta.

This re­flects that hu­man lives are be­ing tak­en at such a rapid rate with the use of high-pow­ered weapons. This not on­ly cat­a­pults in­di­vid­ual fam­i­lies in­to grave dis­tress and frus­tra­tion but goes well be­yond that.

Every mur­der in To­ba­go has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the prospects of To­ba­go’s en­tire pop­u­la­tion, both from a men­tal health per­spec­tive and an eco­nom­ic one. The fact that To­ba­go is far be­hind oth­er Caribbean des­ti­na­tions in terms of ho­tel stock and the qual­i­ty of the tourist prod­uct on of­fer is made even worse when the tiny is­land’s homi­cide rate be­gins to ex­ceed that of oth­er Caribbean na­tions.

If To­ba­go fails to at­tract more Eu­ro­pean and North Amer­i­can tourists due to the un­ruly be­hav­iour of a few, there isn’t much that the is­land has to fall back on.

It was good, there­fore, to see Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Au­gus­tine stand­ing side by side yes­ter­day to present a unit­ed front and to warn crim­i­nals that they will not al­low them safe space in To­ba­go. The pop­u­la­tion needs lit­tle re­minder of the pub­lic spats be­tween these two lead­ers of dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal ide­olo­gies.

The two have set the right tone. This meet­ing on com­mon ground did not af­ford room for cos­met­ic pos­tu­la­tions and po­lit­i­cal one-up­man­ship. Per­haps it is good that they share one thing in com­mon: a gen­uine love and care for the is­land as in­dige­nous To­bag­o­ni­ans. It was Dr Row­ley, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, who ex­tend­ed the in­vi­ta­tion to Mr Au­gus­tine to at­tend the coun­cil’s meet­ing in To­ba­go.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia af­ter­wards, Dr Row­ley was firm in his re­solve to stop the progress of the crim­i­nals, com­mit­ting to send more po­lice of­fi­cers from Trinidad on the ground in To­ba­go, and de­ploy­ing more cam­eras and oth­er forms of tech­nol­o­gy. Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, af­ter all, is a mat­ter for the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, ac­cord­ing to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act, a point Dr Row­ley him­self not­ed yes­ter­day.

Mr Au­gus­tine shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as he told the me­dia that the meet­ing was proac­tive and that if the plans they dis­cussed are im­ple­ment­ed, he be­lieves it would have a pos­i­tive im­pact. On be­half of all To­bag­o­ni­ans and the na­tion at large, we can on­ly hope that they won’t let us down.