Gail Alexan­der

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Rod­ney Charles has slammed Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob on the crime sit­u­a­tion and claimed that Ja­cob is be­ing “set up” by Gov­ern­ment to be the fall guy on the crime prob­lem.

Charles has al­so ques­tioned where the “voic­es of out­rage” against Gov­ern­ment are, in­clud­ing unions, whom he said, “be­lat­ed­ly got their voic­es” and he’s chas­tised mid­dle class and swing vot­ers for “let­ting us down re­peat­ed­ly.”

Speak­ing at a UNC me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Charles said T&T’s now the wild, wild, west.

“It’s not enough to have 60 more of­fi­cers with can­celled leave and on the job, un­less we see ef­fects of their pres­ence in re­duced crime. Noth­ing mea­sur­able in terms of re­duced crime will come of this,” Charles said in ref­er­ence to Ja­cob’s re­cent an­nounce­ment that 60 of­fi­cers had been re­called from va­ca­tion to add more man­pow­er to the crime fight.

Charles de­tailed a ten-point an­ti-crime plan sent to him by a T&T cit­i­zen lec­tur­ing in Chi­na which in­clud­ed in­creased pa­trols on elec­tric bikes na­tion­wide, as “most crime ex­perts agree po­lice pa­trols are one of the most ef­fec­tive tools to re­duce crime,” the plan stat­ed.

Charles said, “Lead­er­ship and man­age­ment are the miss­ing fac­tors in our crime fight­ing strate­gies.”

In­stead of com­plain­ing about miss­ing fa­thers, Charles said Ja­cob should be lam­bast­ing Row­ley and Colm Im­bert for slash­ing TTPS’ bud­get over the years and dis­man­tling the PP gov­ern­ment’s so­cial pro­grammes.

“But (Ja­cob) dares not do so, as he ap­pears in news con­fer­ences along­side Min­is­ter Hinds as though he were on a PNM plat­form. Act­ing CoP stay in your lane! We don’t want a politi­cised po­lice ser­vice,” he said.

Charles claimed Ja­cob had “par­rot­ed” Gov­ern­ment’s state­ments on the Bail Bill.

“What about your ter­ri­ble crime de­tec­tion rates ...You have to catch crim­i­nals be­fore bail comes in­to play...”

Charles felt Ja­cob was “be­ing set up by Gov­ern­ment to be the fall guy for their in­abil­i­ty to deal with crime. Do you want to go down in his­to­ry as the worst per­form­ing CoP in our his­to­ry?”

“If Mr Ja­cob knows crime is caused by high-pow­ered guns com­ing in through le­gal ports and the prob­lem re­mains be­cause of no scan­ners, then it’s clear you’re spin­ning top in mud.”

Charles added, “Those who didn’t hear are now feel­ing. The whole coun­try’s fig­ured out that Row­ley nev­er had, doesn’t now have and nev­er will have a spe­cif­ic and mea­sur­able plan to deal with crime.”

But Charles said there was “...to­tal si­lence and com­plic­i­ty from our so-called in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions.”

Charles chas­tised vot­ers, not­ing that they couldn’t “vote in an in­com­pe­tent gov­ern­ment but hold UNC to ac­count.”

“You vot­ed them in—doc­tors, nurs­es, Petrotrin work­ers! What you sow, you reap! If you fall for gim­micks be­fore elec­tions..the mid­dle class/swing vot­ers let us down re­peat­ed­ly!”

UNC ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Sean Sobers said mur­ders hadn’t start­ed to­day or yes­ter­day but were go­ing on for a very long time. He said vis­it­ing Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali would see the sto­ries on T&T’s crime in news­pa­per. Sobers slammed Row­ley’s “temer­i­ty and gall” to tell the me­dia about their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in dis­sem­i­nat­ing in­for­ma­tion when Sobers said Row­ley, as Op­po­si­tion Leader, brought Email­gate to Par­lia­ment.