Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

No more rhetoric on crime, time for a plan. That was the call to Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad. Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark al­so weighed in on the mat­ter, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of not car­ing about the pub­lic's trou­bles with crime.

Seep­er­sad and Mark fo­cused on crime in their con­tri­bu­tions to yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on 3.8 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing to cov­er costs for 22 di­vi­sions.

Be­gin­ning her con­tri­bu­tion, Seep­er­sad said: "I must men­tion the ex­or­bi­tant mur­der rate, fright­en­ing home in­va­sions, in­creas­ing prices gen­er­al­ly and de­clin­ing liv­ing stan­dards. Our cit­i­zens on the ground are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing many hard­ships, notwith­stand­ing the op­ti­mism ex­pressed in the re­cov­ery and growth of the econ­o­my.

She added: "Crime con­tin­ues to threat­en so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and im­pacts all cit­i­zens. We are in the mid­dle of a mur­der spi­ral pro­ject­ed to be 4,000 mur­ders in eight years and the coun­try with the sixth high­est mur­der rate in the world.

"Gangs are tar­get­ting busi­ness­es, home­own­ers and in­di­vid­u­als. The de­mand for gun li­cences sig­nals the pub­lic's feel­ing of im­po­tence against crim­i­nals and the be­lief that the time has come for them to take mat­ters in­to their own hands. There is an ur­gent need for crime to be ad­dressed from both so­cial and eco­nom­ic fronts. Eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty de­mands that this is­sue be ag­gres­sive­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly tack­led."

Seep­er­sad asked: "How ef­fec­tive will be the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry's bud­get al­lo­ca­tion of $3.325 bil­lion and the TTPS' al­lo­ca­tion of $2.559 bil­lion in stem­ming the crime surges in Trinidad and To­ba­go?"

"The coun­try does not need any more rhetoric. We re­quire ac­tion, not plans on pa­per, of the Gov­ern­ment with­in its con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers.

"Crime fight­ing in the mod­ern age re­quires so­phis­ti­cat­ed ap­proach­es and an in­tel­li­gence corps of per­son­nel to an­tic­i­pate and pre­vent the oc­cur­rence rather than the re­ac­tionary ap­proach­es that con­tin­ue.

"The ob­jec­tive is a mov­ing tar­get and there­fore many and var­ied prongs of at­tack must be de­ployed. While it's not pru­dent to re­lease se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures pub­licly, cit­i­zens have a right to pro­tec­tion and re­quire some mea­sure of as­sur­ance and vis­i­ble ev­i­dence that the pro­tec­tive ser­vices are win­ning the bat­tle. Iron­i­cal­ly, the ev­i­dence avail­able in the pub­lic do­main flies in the face of that re­al­i­ty."

Mark: Gov­ern­ment doesn't care

Mark, who spoke be­fore Seep­er­sad, said Gov­ern­ment had spent more than $400 mil­lion in the last eight years.

"And what do we have to show for this? The peo­ple are liv­ing in mor­tal fear!"

He asked how sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing for the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry of $128 mil­lion and the $100 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the TTPS would help in re­duc­ing mur­ders and home in­va­sions.

Mark, who pre­dict­ed that the mur­der toll would cross 650 by De­cem­ber, added: "Women are be­ing raped! Chil­dren are be­ing mur­dered!"

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of liv­ing in "cuck­oo land" and be­ing dis­con­nect­ed from re­al­i­ty.

"What about peo­ple's safe­ty? It's as if the Gov­ern­ment doesn't care. They don't care and peo­ple are dy­ing every sec­ond of the day.

"My heart goes out to par­ents Neal and Alana Knights whose young daugh­ter Chantel Knights left home in April, nev­er re­turned. Her hand, a part of her body was found in Tu­na­puna re­cent­ly, 25 years of age. That's where our coun­try has reached.

"She lived in Ch­agua­nas and went to Curepe and dis­ap­peared. What are we do­ing? But in­stead, the Min­is­ter comes to give the im­pres­sion every­thing is hunky do­ry and okay be­cause he is okay and his bil­lion­aire friends are okay but the peo­ple are not okay!"Mark de­clared.