Crim­i­nol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran says as gun vi­o­lence con­tin­ues to es­ca­late across the coun­try, ag­gres­sive polic­ing does not ap­pear to be work­ing and on­ly a clean-up of the TTPS’ op­er­a­tions may help rec­ti­fy some of the is­sues.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, as he said the fo­cus should be on the po­lice as well as the crim­i­nals.

De­osaran said while the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has heed­ed the coun­try’s call for a more ag­gres­sive ap­proach to crime fight­ing, the re­al­i­ty is that crim­i­nals still aren’t be­ing caught. He said the de­tec­tion rate is quite low, es­pe­cial­ly for mur­ders.

As such, be be­lieves there should be a clean-up not on­ly when it comes to the man­age­ment of polic­ing but al­so the process of op­er­a­tions.

De­osaran said, “The pop­u­la­tion is re­al­ly cry­ing out for some hard­line polic­ing. To­ba­go, Far­ley Au­gus­tine, is call­ing for hard­line polic­ing. He calls it ag­gres­sive polic­ing, but, on the oth­er end, there are peo­ple who look at the root caus­es of crime, the soft­er is­sues, so the Gov­ern­ment has a dilem­ma on its hands. But, in the end, they will have to choose the po­lit­i­cal route, oth­er­wise they will not be in pow­er for long. The po­lit­i­cal route, it seems to me, is har line polic­ing.”

There have been 526 mur­ders record­ed so far this year, com­pared to 473 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

De­osaran al­so be­lieves Gov­ern­ment needs to do more to im­prove de­tec­tion rates and en­sure there are suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tions.

“It means ar­rest, pros­e­cu­tion, sur­veil­lance, vig­i­lance, in­tel­li­gence. The weak­ness in that ap­proach so far is that you not catch­ing the crim­i­nals, so how would you en­force im­pris­on­ment, pros­e­cu­tion. The de­tec­tion rate is quite low, pri­mar­i­ly for mur­ders, fif­teen per cent if I’m very char­i­ta­ble. So we have to clean up not on­ly the struc­ture of polic­ing; the man­age­ment side, (but) the process of op­er­a­tions,” he said.

While Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry Fitzger­ald Hinds has placed some of the blame for the high crime rate on the cit­i­zen­ry, De­osaran said in­sti­tu­tions, as op­posed to the gen­er­al pub­lic, should come un­der some scruti­ny.

In par­tic­u­lar, he said the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is fail­ing young peo­ple, as there is a high (ex­am) fail­ure rate and too many drop-outs. How­ev­er, he is adamant that the ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for crime lies square­ly on the shoul­ders of those charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fight­ing crime and en­sur­ing cit­i­zens’ safe­ty, say­ing the TTPS lead­er­ship is­sues must be a pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion, as the buck stops with the po­lice.

De­osaran said blam­ing the pop­u­la­tion can on­ly go so far be­cause the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion were law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and they are the ones be­ing af­fect­ed by crime. There­fore, he said the fo­cus must be on the mi­nor­i­ty caus­ing the hav­oc.

“I know the po­lice is un­der pres­sure from the pub­lic but the po­lice has a pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for law and or­der and if law and has col­lapsed or is col­laps­ing, they too have to be ac­count­able. I sym­pa­thise with the calls for par­ents to be more re­spon­si­ble, moth­ers to be more re­spon­si­ble, the schools, the prin­ci­pals, I agree with that, but the lead­er­ship must come from those who are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly em­pow­ered to look af­ter law and or­der,” he said

He said if the lead­ers are un­able to con­tain crime, there is an ho­n­ourable route, not­ing this is the prin­ci­ple of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties.