An­na-Lisa Paul

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob has giv­en him­self a B+ for his per­for­mance and has de­fend­ed his crime-fight­ing strate­gies, say­ing they were con­stant­ly evolv­ing in or­der to ad­dress the chang­ing land­scape of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in T&T.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the crit­i­cism and di­rect at­tack re­gard­ing crime-fight­ing ef­forts un­der his tenure af­ter the coun­try set a new record for mur­ders this week, he said, “We look at in­di­vid­u­als and not at the sit­u­a­tion and what is ex­ist­ing, and we al­ways be­lieve that it takes an in­di­vid­ual or some su­per­hero to fix it.”

He added, “But this re­quires pru­dent think­ing and pru­dent work to be done in putting in the prop­er sys­tems in place in or­der to deal with what is be­fore us.”

He claimed peo­ple were al­ways look­ing for a fall guy.

Re­spond­ing to calls from cer­tain quar­ters and a frus­trat­ed pub­lic for him to step down as the head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as mur­ders and se­ri­ous crimes con­tin­ue apace, Ja­cob re­flect­ed, “In 2008, there was no call for the CoP to step down when we had 550 mur­ders. In 2018, when we had 523 mur­ders, there was no call. In 2019, when there were 539 mur­ders, there was no call be­cause the coun­try un­der­stood the land­scape and what was hap­pen­ing with the crime.”

Asked if he would con­sid­er the call to demit of­fice, Ja­cob replied, “If I do that, I will ac­tu­al­ly cause a lot of dis­ap­point­ment and cre­ate a lack of mo­ti­va­tion among the men and women of the TTPS.”

He added, “We are at a stage now where we are sup­posed to bind to­geth­er and work to re­solve a sit­u­a­tion when we are at this peak. We need each oth­er more than ever at this point in time.

“I don’t think at all that it would be wise at this stage to pull out, as it would not add any val­ue and would act as a de-mo­ti­va­tor to the of­fi­cers who have been out there, work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly and try­ing their best to deal with the sit­u­a­tion since from COVID to now.”

Ja­cob al­so spoke to the evo­lu­tion of crime, say­ing: “We have a very unique sit­u­a­tion here in T&T, where we now have for the first time in our his­to­ry, a pro­lif­er­a­tion of high-pow­ered ri­fles and there is clear ev­i­dence to show that for the first time in the his­to­ry of T&T, the TTPS has seized 115 high-pow­ered weapons that is cre­at­ing may­hem.”

Train­ing his at­ten­tion on the num­ber of il­le­gal weapons seized by the TTPS while com­ing in­to the coun­try via le­gal ports of en­try dur­ing the past year, Ja­cob asked, “Why don’t we call for the head of Cus­toms and oth­er per­sons to go?”

He in­sist­ed there con­tin­ues to be com­plic­i­ty by peo­ple in high of­fice and ques­tioned why there con­tin­ued to be no calls for their re­moval.

He said the sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther com­pound­ed by the in­clu­sion of Venezue­lan na­tion­als who were not present in T&T in 2008 but sur­faced from 2018 to the present, some of whom were now in­volved in crime.

“We have clear ev­i­dence where some of them are in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and it would show that with­in the past few years, we have a num­ber of them who were charged for pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in our coun­try,” Ja­cob said.

Over 240 Venezue­lan na­tion­als have been charged with se­ri­ous of­fences with­in the past three years, he said.

Re­gard­ing the call for stricter con­sid­er­a­tions in the grant­i­ng of bail to peo­ple for firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences, the CoP said there was a greater need for ju­di­cial of­fi­cers to, “look at the da­ta and make de­ci­sions in re­la­tion to what is be­fore them.”

Ja­cob al­so spoke of sev­er­al ini­tia­tives he was re­spon­si­ble for set­ting up which he said were yield­ing pos­i­tive re­sults and had led to an in­crease in the num­ber of mur­ders be­ing de­tect­ed and more peo­ple be­ing charged with mur­der.