Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has as­sured the pop­u­la­tion that the State agen­cies will not give up the fight to rid the na­tion of the wide­spread “gun cul­ture” in T&T.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment, which came through the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Face­book page on Sat­ur­day evening, was in re­sponse to the dead­ly shoot­ing at Harpe Place in east Port-of-Spain.

Row­ley said the in­ci­dent in which five peo­ple lost their lives at one lo­ca­tion and where three oth­ers were killed else­where, “brings home the depth of the prob­lem that the Gov­ern­ment is grap­pling with”.

“This ever in­creas­ing to­tal wan­ton dis­re­gard for hu­man life is to be con­demned in the sound­est of ways. My con­do­lences go out to the fam­i­lies who are to­day ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the pain that trau­ma­tis­es the en­tire na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Row­ley said.

He added that the pres­ence of and fre­quent use of as­sault weapons in the coun­try has brought an added di­men­sion of ef­fec­tive­ness to the mur­der­ous law­less­ness which con­tin­ues to plague T&T.

“I want to give the na­tion the as­sur­ance that even as we ex­pe­ri­ence to­day’s (Sat­ur­day’s) tragedy, the State, through its law­ful ac­tiv­i­ties, will con­tin­ue to iden­ti­fy and ex­tract these weapons and their crim­i­nal own­ers and op­er­a­tors,” Row­ley said.

‘Hol­low con­do­lences
and plat­i­tudes’

Yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the prime min­is­ter needs to prove there is ac­tion be­hind his words.

“I as an aca­d­e­m­ic would need and by ex­ten­sion, the so­ci­ety, would need an­swered: What are you go­ing to do about it? How you’re go­ing to do it and when?

“And in this in­stance, be­cause this touch­es and con­cerns na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, as well as a strong po­lit­i­cal will, there is no need for de­tails to these an­swers be­cause in this in­stance ac­tions sim­ply speak loud­er than words. If the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to sim­ply hear or read words with no ac­tions then it’s fair to say that as the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment you have failed to an­swer these re­al ques­tions,” Mo­hammed added.

Op­po­si­tion MP Rush­ton Paray, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks of­fered lit­tle so­lace to a na­tion grap­pling with an es­ca­lat­ing crime cri­sis.

Paray said de­spite re­cent se­cu­ri­ty de­lib­er­a­tions both do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, in­clud­ing changes in lead­er­ship with­in na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, the ab­sence of sub­stan­tive ac­tion from Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion leaves cit­i­zens dis­il­lu­sioned and vul­ner­a­ble.

He added that the “Harpe Place mas­sacre”, oc­cur­ring brazen­ly in broad day­light with­in close prox­im­i­ty to law en­force­ment in­fra­struc­ture and sur­veil­lance sys­tems, has yet to yield any ar­rests.

“Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s as­sur­ances to the na­tion, while well-in­ten­tioned, lack the con­crete strate­gies ur­gent­ly need­ed to com­bat the per­va­sive threat of vi­o­lent crime,” Paray said.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go finds it­self be­sieged by law­less­ness, with Row­ley’s rhetoric pro­vid­ing lit­tle more than hol­low con­do­lences and plat­i­tudes. De­spite sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing sub­stan­tial bud­get al­lo­ca­tions and ini­tia­tives such as bol­ster­ing po­lice re­servists, the coun­try re­mains per­ilous­ly ex­posed to the pre­da­tions of armed crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” he added.

Paray claimed that un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s stew­ard­ship, mur­ders have be­come dis­tress­ing­ly rou­tine, mir­ror­ing the fre­quen­cy of wa­ter short­ages in cit­i­zens’ dai­ly lives.

He re­called that the re­cent tragedy in Ma­yaro, where four campers fell vic­tim to sense­less vi­o­lence, un­der­scores the deep trau­ma in­flict­ed up­on com­mu­ni­ties.

“Re­gret­tably, there has been a con­spic­u­ous lack of ac­tion to stem the flow of il­lic­it firearms, dis­man­tle crim­i­nal net­works, and en­hance law en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties to im­prove de­tec­tion rates. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion is tar­nished by per­cep­tions of dis­or­der, while ac­count­abil­i­ty from our lead­ers re­mains elu­sive,” Paray said.

He added, “The blood of count­less vic­tims stains the hands of a Gov­ern­ment that has failed to de­liv­er on its fun­da­men­tal du­ty to pro­tect its cit­i­zens.”