Pres­i­dent of one of T&T's lead­ing NGOs Si­mone de la Bastide has said that the coun­try is now in a crime pan­dem­ic.

De la Bastide, the wife of for­mer chief jus­tice Michael de la Bastide said the “pub­lic is cry­ing out dai­ly, plead­ing for ba­sic pro­tec­tion from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, for their fam­i­lies, their chil­dren, their prop­er­ties, etc and yet lit­tle is done that makes a dif­fer­ence to quell the fear and the crime. We are in a crime pan­dem­ic and have been for many years.

She added: “Al­ways look­ing over our shoul­ders wher­ev­er we go. Putting the plas­ter on the wound is not the an­swer but pre­vent­ing the wound will be more pro­duc­tive in my view. Up­lift­ing the down­trod­den, their com­mu­ni­ties, ed­u­ca­tion etc etc…..Pri­or­i­ties are all wrong in my view. It should al­ways be peo­ple and coun­try first be­fore par­ty and self.

She made the com­ment in a let­ter penned to Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day in which she re­called the hor­ror she ex­pe­ri­enced when ban­dits stormed an apart­ment. She said she stared death.

“There is no fear of the law, we need peo­ple in lead­er­ship po­si­tions who tru­ly care,” she said.

Her trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence, which she re­vealed yes­ter­day, came as oth­er vic­tims of crime re­called how they too were vi­cious­ly at­tacked and robbed at their homes.

Fol­low­ing is he state­ment.

A crime pan­dem­ic

If ever there tru­ly was a pan­dem­ic in Trinidad & To­ba­go it is now.. A Crime Pan­dem­ic of mag­ni­tude pro­por­tion. I have penned this let­ter many times in my mind but am now pro­pelled and in­spired to write it.

Sev­er­al times a week, from dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties around the coun­try, on so­cial me­dia and the dai­ly elec­tron­ic and print me­dia, the pub­lic is told of ter­ri­fy­ing hor­ror sto­ries and acts of vi­o­lent crime that they, a fam­i­ly mem­ber, friend, neigh­bour or stranger has just ex­pe­ri­enced re: a rob­bery, rape, beat­ing or mur­der. It is so sur­re­al, the fear that we the pub­lic live with and feel each and every day. Most right think­ing peo­ple do care about the sense­less and hor­rif­ic mur­ders and the lev­el of crime in our coun­try. There is sim­ply no fear of the law in our sweet and sour T&T. This is part of the prob­lem. Any and every­one is now a tar­get, poor, rich, in be­tween, old, young, the vul­ner­a­ble; Every­one! The dread­ed ques­tion is….. WHO IS NEXT!!

I have per­son­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced this nerve shat­ter­ing, adren­a­lin fu­elled fear that I was about to die. Some years ago, when a friend and I were talk­ing on the third lev­el of an apart­ment build­ing. It was nag­ging me for quite some time to get up and close the back door, which re­gret­ful­ly, I nev­er did.

We had just got up to pre­pare din­ner and in no time, two masked men en­tered through the back door with raised ma­chetes, (cut­lass­es) gun­ning for us. My screams were force­ful and silent and while my friend who was in front of me kept dodg­ing the cut­lass at­tacks, me­chan­i­cal­ly, I swift­ly turned and went back to the porch, buy­ing a few sec­onds by slam­ming the glass door be­hind me; which the sa­tan­ic crea­ture chas­ing me slammed in­to, break­ing the glass.

The adren­a­lin was high and I re­alised that my on­ly es­cape was to jump over the bal­cony, two storeys down. I land­ed bad­ly on my heels/an­kles which were both bro­ken and hav­ing rolled down to the low­er lev­el there­after, I got up and ran on those bro­ken feet on­to the road­way, where I soon col­lapsed, think­ing I was safe.

The grue­some mem­o­ry floods back as if it were yes­ter­day. Hav­ing got­ten up to run on those bro­ken feet to try to es­cape, the evil crea­ture with bulging eyes through his green mask left the third floor apart­ment through the same back door that I should have closed, on­ly to con­front me again with a raised ma­chete, about to strike me, in the dri­ve­way…. WHY ???

With my arms raised above my head to pro­tect my­self from the ex­pect­ed blows. I was beg­ging for my life, re­peat­ed­ly call­ing out God’s name to help me. It felt like such a long time.

God an­swered my des­per­ate plea as an­oth­er friend who we were ex­pect­ing, drove up with bright lights on and sped quick­ly in my di­rec­tion. Sud­den­ly, the evil crea­ture with bulging eyes scam­pered off. I was saved. My mind went blank there­after, as I must have passed out, wak­ing up in the hos­pi­tal where I lay on a stretch­er for many hours be­fore be­ing seen by a doc­tor. (An­oth­er sto­ry for an­oth­er day.)

My rea­son for be­ing ex­plic­it in the de­tails of my hor­ren­dous and un­for­get­table ex­pe­ri­ence is sim­ply to say that once you have been through an or­deal such as this, or worse, on­ly then would you ful­ly com­pre­hend the grav­i­ty of what oth­ers have gone through with a sim­i­lar vile at­tack against them. It nev­er leaves you.

Yet the car­nage con­tin­ues, dri­ven by the en­hance­ment of drugs where their courage and will to com­mit hor­ren­dous and evil acts are per­pe­trat­ed on in­no­cent vic­tims.

I re­mem­ber years ago when we lived in Vista­bel­la (San Fer­nan­do); the trains used to pass out­side of Vista­bel­la and on hear­ing the ap­proach­ing loud horn from the train, friends called one an­oth­er to alert them of the in­com­ing train where a dozen or so of us used to run to­wards the train line to pull sug­ar cane from the mov­ing train.

Our par­ents nev­er knew. Mad­ness as I think of it now.

But at the end of our street were the rem­nants of a train line which was over­grown with bush and with walls on ei­ther side, hous­ing neigh­bour­hoods.

I was about 12 years old when I used to walk on the train line tracks, tak­ing a short cut to get to the main road, to the par­lour, where I would use my pock­et mon­ey to buy ‘kaiser balls.’ It took about 15 min­utes on the tracks and I al­ways felt safe, no one ever trou­bled me.

I shud­der now at the thought of do­ing that to­day. Would I reach the par­lour or get raped/mur­dered. What has hap­pened over the years to where we are to­day ? Our beau­ti­ful Trinidad & To­ba­go that once was. Is it progress? Is it mis­man­age­ment of the coun­try over the years, or both?

The pub­lic is cry­ing out dai­ly, plead­ing for ba­sic pro­tec­tion from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, for their fam­i­lies, their chil­dren, their prop­er­ties etc and yet lit­tle is done that makes a dif­fer­ence to quell the fear and the crime.

We are in a crime pan­dem­ic and have been for many years. Al­ways look­ing over our shoul­ders wher­ev­er we go. Putting the plas­ter on the wound is not the an­swer but pre­vent­ing the wound will be more pro­duc­tive in my view. Up­lift­ing the down­trod­den, their com­mu­ni­ties, ed­u­ca­tion etc etc…..Pri­or­i­ties are all wrong in my view. It should al­ways be peo­ple and coun­try first be­fore par­ty and self.

Was it Kofi Anan that once said: “Poor peo­ple should be part of the so­lu­tion to de­vel­op­ment, not part of the prob­lem”. How cor­rect. The NGO’s, CBO’s and FBO’s play a sig­nif­i­cant part to­wards this goal. If on­ly the au­thor­i­ties would rec­og­nize that and work along­side these or­gan­i­sa­tions, life would in­deed be some­what bet­ter for every­one.

This is how Sin­ga­pore be­came a first world na­tion, out of the bow­els of pover­ty. Iron­i­cal­ly “a place” T&T has nev­er been in. What is re­port­ed on/in the news is a small frac­tion of the true amount of crime per­pe­trat­ed on our peo­ple. The nu­mer­ous re­ports of crim­i­nal, vi­o­lent acts per­pe­trat­ed on our cit­i­zens, the vul­ner­a­ble, on so­cial me­dia, is in­dica­tive of the high lev­el of crime in our coun­try that is to­tal­ly out of con­trol.

There are two ar­eas here that must be ad­dressed. The evil crea­tures out there that per­pe­trate these acts, do so un­der an en­hance­ment. They feel the pow­er more­so with guns/weapons. They are so drugged up in or­der to do their crimes, seek­ing the courage to car­ry out the vi­o­lent crime.

What I saw in those evil eyes were not nor­mal, not hu­man. They were pumped up with drugs. I per­son­al­ly know three peo­ple who were mur­dered and count­less oth­ers who were vic­tims of a crime here in our coun­try. In a small coun­try like ours this is over­whelm­ing.

Sim­ply put, a se­ri­ous at­tempt must be made to erad­i­cate the drug/gun trade in our coun­try and the best peo­ple must be put in con­trol in or­der to make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in stamp­ing out the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, what­ev­er the col­lar.

There is no fear of the law, we need peo­ple in lead­er­ship po­si­tions who tru­ly care, who will put coun­try first and who will bring our so­ci­ety back to some sem­blance of what it used to be. I of­ten rem­i­nisce on the olé time days, how it used to be. Now I fear for my chil­dren/our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren.

Just my view...

↔—Si­mone de la Bastide