Trust is deeply root­ed in hu­man re­la­tion­ships and the in­sti­tu­tions on which a so­ci­ety is based.

It in­volves be­liev­ing in an­oth­er per­son or en­ti­ty’s re­li­a­bil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, and hon­esty which we iden­ti­fy as con­fi­dence. Trust and con­fi­dence in the in­sti­tu­tion­al el­e­ments cre­ate or­der by en­gen­der­ing a be­lief that the in­sti­tu­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture is ad­e­quate for the task. When trust and con­fi­dence in these in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments weak­en so­ci­eties be­gin to un­rav­el.

This year 2024 is end­ing with a record mur­der rate. The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er heads the in­sti­tu­tion des­ig­nat­ed to law en­force­ment. Her com­ment that she was dis­ap­point­ed that mur­ders had reached a new record was un­der­whelm­ing as was the Prime Min­is­ter’s ex­pres­sion of shock and dis­ap­point­ment. The state­ments did noth­ing to as­suage the pub­lic’s fears or to give some mea­sure of hope. Iden­ti­fy­ing mea­sures tak­en to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion would have al­le­vi­at­ed the dis­tress.

The de­tec­tion rate re­mains too low sug­gest­ing no im­prove­ment. In Feb­ru­ary, the CoP com­plained po­lice of­fi­cers were not fol­low­ing in­struc­tions to wear body cam­eras while on du­ty. It was not clear whether ap­pro­pri­ate dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was en­forced to en­sure com­pli­ance.

Fur­ther, crim­i­nal charges were dis­missed against many po­lice of­fi­cers on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions ei­ther for want of pros­e­cu­tion or be­cause a wit­ness had changed their sto­ry. The head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty pub­licly com­plained that rec­om­men­da­tions to the CoP go un­heed­ed and unim­ple­ment­ed.

To add in­sult to in­jury, the CoP in com­ment­ing on the surge that pushed the mur­der to a new record, not­ed that crime is every­one’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, there­by im­ply­ing crime was a shared col­lec­tive fail­ure. The COP’s mes­sag­ing in­vari­ably trans­lates as a pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise to de­flect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and of­ten comes across as wish­ful, as dis­tinct from a con­sid­ered eval­u­a­tion.

Lan­guage is a pow­er­ful tool that can mo­ti­vate, sig­nal aware­ness or in­di­cate dis­con­nect­ed­ness or dis­tance from the task at hand. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the CoP’s lan­guage con­veys the im­pres­sion of help­less­ness rather than strength. It does not evoke the con­fi­dence that the TTPS is ei­ther try­ing its best or that it is on top of things. The im­pres­sion is that the sit­u­a­tion has ex­ceed­ed the ca­pac­i­ty of the TTPS to re­spond with a sense of ur­gency.

The pub­lic is cor­rect in won­der­ing what’s next. Ad­dress­ing any prob­lem starts with the ac­cep­tance of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, defin­ing the prob­lem, analysing the prob­lem, iden­ti­fy­ing the is­sues, de­ter­min­ing the pos­si­ble so­lu­tions and fi­nal­ly im­ple­ment­ing a cho­sen course of ac­tion.

The next step is to mon­i­tor progress and ad­just as nec­es­sary. Mur­der is an apex se­cu­ri­ty is­sue, and the ubiq­ui­ty and fre­quen­cy of grue­some mur­ders lead to an un­der­ly­ing fear which is un­der­min­ing the so­cial fab­ric.

The ob­vi­ous break­down of dis­ci­pline in the uni­formed ser­vices does not in­spire trust or con­fi­dence. Pub­licly lament­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion and pray­ing for a change is not good enough. Nei­ther is it ac­cept­able to say that the ob­jec­tives were too am­bi­tious as was said when re­view­ing the 2023 crime sit­u­a­tion be­fore the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee in Jan­u­ary.

Nei­ther of the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties demon­strat­ed in­ci­sive­ness dur­ing the last lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion. The gen­er­al elec­tion is due in 2025. Crime, cor­rup­tion and the econ­o­my will be the key elec­tion top­ics. We can on­ly hope that the elec­tion date will help po­lit­i­cal par­ties to fo­cus on and ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for out­comes.