Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has labelled the country’s crime situation as “unusually horrendous,” admitting the country has serious social difficulties.
Addressing a post-Cabinet news conference at Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, yesterday, Rowley said the crime situation requires several interventions. He said while there are currently interventions available, they aren’t enough.
“I can’t recall a period of time, in a period of weeks, such viciousness of crime and frequency of crime in, and among, family members out on the street. It was just a while ago that I made a comment that we are a violent society and apparently there are people attempting to prove that statement true,” Dr Rowley said.
“Some of the crimes coming to us on an hourly basis, you have to ask yourself, what are these people thinking?”
Dr Rowley said he recently spent time meeting with young students in his constituency and he’s always amazed by their innocence.
However, he lamented that some children lose their innocence as they get older and find themselves in crime.
“The question I come away with is what happens to these angels by a time they get to a particular age? Where is the angelic being? Something is wrong between then and there.”
Asked if he believed enough is being done to combat crime at the highest levels, Rowley said the country could never do enough as long as such violent crimes continue to take place.
He admitted that much more needs to be done.
“There’s nobody in this fight against crime. Nobody is getting a pass. If you know your family members have a gun, you’re not getting a pass from me. If you know your friends on the block who you spend the day with and are not looking for a job, but planning the next crime, you’re not getting a pass,” he said.
Acknowledging that the pandemic and its corresponding public health measures increased mental health issues in the country, he said it was still not the cause of the country’s violent nature.
He said it may have exacerbated it, but it existed before COVID-19 arrived in Trinidad and Tobago.
“The ones that hurt the most are intra-family violence because household and family, that is the castle,” he said.
“When did we create the people who say they have a reason for what they are doing because they didn’t get this or get that?”
There have been more than 202 homicides in Trinidad for the year.
Of that figure, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service’s Homicide Bureau estimated that around 38 per cent has been gang-related, 17 per cent were drug-related, 13 per cent robbery-related and 15 per cent were as a result of domestic violence/altercations.
The TTPS also estimates that there are more than 12,000 illegal guns in the country.
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