KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is fed up with be­ing blamed for T&T’s spi­ralling crime rate, adding he is al­so tired of peo­ple seek­ing le­nien­cy for some crim­i­nals.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the White­hall, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said those con­tribut­ing to high crime should not be giv­en a pass, es­pe­cial­ly those who harm chil­dren.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that at­tribut­ing high crime to of­fice­hold­ers is base­less, while he con­demned the re­al “mon­sters” re­spon­si­ble for the blood­shed against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

“Don’t let any­body fool you, that crime is not be­ing done based on who is in of­fice. It’s done on the ba­sis of whether there are ben­e­fits to be had by the per­pe­tra­tors, and as fast as you stop or sup­press one area, they sur­prise you with new in­ge­nu­ity and heart­less­ness,” Dr Row­ley said.

Hours ear­li­er, En­ri­co Guer­ra and his five-year-old daugh­ter Ani­ka, who were gunned down in Moru­ga last week, were laid to rest.

As the en­tire Moru­ga com­mu­ni­ty mourned the fa­ther and daugh­ter, Dr Row­ley again said their killing not on­ly sad­dened him, but he be­lieves on­ly “a dev­il” could sense­less­ly kill a five-year-old. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that it was not non-na­tion­als but our own peo­ple com­mit­ting these crimes.

Row­ley said he has no em­pa­thy for these crim­i­nals.

“For a fel­low cit­i­zen to have seen a child in some­body’s hand or in some­body’s pres­ence and de­lib­er­ate­ly dis­charge a firearm know­ing that you’re go­ing to kill that child, you are a dif­fer­ent kind of dev­il. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we have those in this coun­try ... You will watch a five-year-old child and dis­charge a firearm in­to that child’s lit­tle body? I am a grand­fa­ther of four chil­dren, and that one made me feel very sad for the peo­ple to have end­ed up pro­duc­ing that as part of their fam­i­ly.

“And, I have no ex­cuse to make or any em­pa­thy to hold out for peo­ple like that be­cause you are de­stroy­ing our so­ci­ety.

“Don’t give them any pass by try­ing to blame me be­cause I have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that those whose job it is to iden­ti­fy and to chase down and to bring them to jus­tice, that they are on the job.”

He added, “That’s my work. But, the peo­ple who are do­ing those crimes, whose son is that? Whose broth­er is that? Whose cousin is it that will do some­thing like that? ... Not a Venezue­lan or a Guyanese or a Ghana­ian or a Russ­ian. It is some­one who we spawn here, who we fed here, who we gave op­por­tu­ni­ties here.”

Row­ley said there must be a lim­it to the lack of con­cern peo­ple have for their fel­low men, as when peo­ple die, it’s not one per­son but a lit­tle piece of every­one that dies too.

He al­so said pover­ty is not an ex­cuse for com­mit­ting heinous crimes, and urged young peo­ple to take ad­van­tage of the many youth-fo­cused gov­ern­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in­stead of choos­ing a life of crime.

“Some peo­ple be­lieve they have a right to be­have like that and some peo­ple be­lieve they have a rea­son to be­have like that. Pover­ty! So, the way out of pover­ty is to choose that lev­el of vi­o­lent con­duct that de­bas­es all of us?”

Scot­land work­ing hard

It’s been a lit­tle over a month since Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and in Dr Row­ley’s view, he has been work­ing dili­gent­ly.

Asked about Scot­land’s per­for­mance yes­ter­day, Row­ley replied, “Min­is­ter Scot­land is work­ing quite dili­gent­ly with po­lice, work­ing close­ly with the po­lice en­sur­ing that the gov­ern­ment’s in­put in­to polic­ing is very time­ly and pro­vid­ing the sup­port of the cab­i­net.”

He added that there are sev­er­al ar­eas where the state is try­ing to sup­press crim­i­nal con­duct.

There have been over 416 mur­ders record­ed for the year al­ready.