Crime has al­ways been deemed a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball and with the count­down to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion now on, the ques­tion is which par­ty will score enough points to tack­le the is­sue for cit­i­zens.  

For some vot­ers, no par­ty can con­vince them to vote be­cause as far as they are con­cerned, all politi­cians have failed to show they can ad­dress the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion.

Mor­vant pen­sion­er, who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Paul, is one such un­con­vinced cit­i­zen.  

“There hasn’t been noth­ing, whether op­po­si­tion or whether rul­ing par­ty, there hasn’t been noth­ing to con­vince me that they could stop crime. And see­ing that it’s es­ca­lat­ing so much now and at such a high rate.” 

As of yes­ter­day, there were 98 mur­ders com­pared to 135 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. While the Po­lice Ser­vice boasts of a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes, the num­ber of un­de­tect­ed mur­ders, though less than last year, has al­ways been a barom­e­ter for crime sup­pres­sion. 

Ch­agua­nas res­i­dent, who on­ly iden­ti­fied him­self as Lee, 32, said un­less there is a long-term crime-fight­ing plan, what­ev­er politi­cians do will not work.  

Lee said he is not con­vinced that any par­ty is able to ad­dress crime and while he him­self is un­sure, he is cer­tain that the re­peat­ed at­tempts of short-term fix­es such as more po­lice of­fi­cers, is not work­ing.  

“The short-term thing is not work­ing. More po­lice, not do­ing any­thing. The State of Emer­gency, not do­ing any­thing. Some­thing to help the po­lice, how much the po­lice can do? They can’t be on every cor­ner!” he said, adding that if he were to vote based sole­ly on how par­ties ad­dress crime, he would not vote.  

For Laven­tille pen­sion­er Ameena Hamid, it’s the re­cy­cling of old poli­cies that needs to change. In her view, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty in pow­er, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, is ir­rel­e­vant when it comes to find­ing a last­ing so­lu­tion to crime.

“What I find, all the elec­tive bod­ies, they end up deal­ing with the same poli­cies, there’s no change in it. So, there’s no change in ef­fect, no mat­ter who we put there, right? Un­less poli­cies are changed, and you have equal­i­ty and hon­esty, noth­ing will change. No mat­ter who goes there, that’s how I feel about it.” 

Michelle Stacey Mar­cano, 40, who Guardian Me­dia spoke with in down­town Port-of-Spain wants some­thing new from po­lit­i­cal par­ties.  

“If a po­lit­i­cal par­ty wants my vote, you can’t main­tain the sta­tus quo that is not work­ing. You have to bring so­lu­tions that could pro­duce re­sults that could ben­e­fit our na­tion. And if your re­sults are not go­ing for­ward, then where is your vi­sion?” 

Mar­cano added: “So when we’re deal­ing with crime, what is not work­ing? Why are crimes not be­ing solved? So if a po­lit­i­cal par­ty wants the vote, then tell us how you could cor­rect the prob­lems of crimes not be­ing solved. Why is that an is­sue? We have po­lice of­fi­cers; we have a court sys­tem. Why are there de­lays in the court sys­tem? How many peo­ple are vic­tims of that? So, if we have a po­lit­i­cal par­ty who will not just brush it un­der and not an­swer the ques­tion but an­swer the ques­tion and give us a tan­gi­ble so­lu­tion and then let’s move for­ward with it.” 

Samanth Davis, 34, from El Do­ra­do said the par­ty that gets her vote must con­vince her that crime will be dealt with at its root cause and not just putting more po­lice of­fi­cers on the streets.   

“Crime is some­thing that I think that any gov­ern­ment that comes in will have a hard time solv­ing. Be­cause crime, I be­lieve, is a peo­ple prob­lem. It’s a per­son­al prob­lem. A per­son choos­es to do the wrong thing. A per­son has their own mind­set, so they choose to do what they want to do.

“But I be­lieve that the gov­ern­ment or who­ev­er comes in­to pow­er, elec­tion com­ing up, what they can do is try their best not to just push down po­lice and every­thing to the peo­ple. But try their best to at least try to help them in a cer­tain type of way. Try to fig­ure out the rea­son why. Talk to peo­ple about why they do what they do.” 

Lead­ers promise ‘po­lit­i­cal will’

Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front Mick­ela Pan­day be­lieves gov­ern­ments in the past lacked the po­lit­i­cal will to se­ri­ous­ly ad­dress crime, crim­i­nals, and the crim­i­nal­ly mind­ed.  

“I just do not see the po­lit­i­cal will there at all. But we have it. And that’s why we’re ask­ing peo­ple, of course, to vote for the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front.” 

When told that all par­ties when out of gov­ern­ment seemed to have the so­lu­tion, Pan­day said her par­ty was nev­er giv­en the chance to prove it­self or to be proven wrong.  

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance, led by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, like the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, wants a crack at run­ning the coun­try. While he is not plan­ning on hold­ing any min­is­te­r­i­al post should the NTA make it to of­fice, se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert and NTA mem­ber Ma­jor Dirk Barnes said past po­lit­i­cal par­ties failed at ef­fec­tive plan­ning and ef­fi­cient ex­e­cu­tion of crime-fight­ing plans.

“Every­body else who has en­tered in­to gov­ern­ment in the man­i­festo pri­or to the elec­tion, keep say­ing yes they have a crime plan and then what hap­pens? They get in the gov­ern­ment and that plan falls apart be­cause they didn’t re­al­ly ad­dress the is­sue of the lack of re­sources and the de­mo­ti­vat­ed of­fi­cers and all these dif­fer­ent things. So, these are some of the ar­eas that the NTA will be look­ing at go­ing in be­cause we do have the ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.” 

One of the things Pan­day said could be done to ad­dress a lack of re­sources in the Po­lice Ser­vice would be to re­vamp the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (VM­COTT) formed in 2005 un­der the gov­er­nance of her late fa­ther Bas­deo Pan­day while he was prime min­is­ter. She said the mon­ey spent on pur­chas­ing new ve­hi­cles could be re­lo­cat­ed to re­pair­ing old ones. 

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and the PNM’s prospec­tive can­di­date for Arou­ca/Lopinot Mar­vin Gon­za­les did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages about the rul­ing par­ty’s per­for­mance in deal­ing with crime and its plans for the fu­ture, if re-elect­ed

The po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) and To­ba­go Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine al­so did not re­spond to calls and mes­sages about his par­ty’s thoughts on the crime prob­lem.

How­ev­er, shad­ow na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the par­ty will move on with its stand-your-ground pol­i­cy which will arm law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, along with leg­isla­tive ref­or­ma­tion.  

Mooni­lal said one of the things the UNC will ad­dress will be the derelict ve­hi­cles.  

“We will al­so in­tro­duce a dif­fer­ent type of per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem that will al­low day-to-day, in re­al time man­age­ment of law en­force­ment. And I think that has to deal with the po­lit­i­cal will.” 

He ac­cused the PNM of fail­ing to ad­dress crime be­cause of what he de­scribed as in­com­pe­tence, in­ef­fi­cien­cy and a lack of po­lit­i­cal will. Mooni­lal said a fo­cus on sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence will be adopt­ed to ad­dress crime.

On the po­lit­i­cal plat­form last week, UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that for­mer crime fight­er se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der, if the par­ty is suc­cess­ful at the polls, will lead the an­ti­crime fight as Min­is­ter of Home Af­fairs. The post is not new as she has in the past spo­ken of split­ting the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry in two, one fo­cus­ing on the coun­try and the oth­er on ex­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty threats.

An­a­lysts: Time for some­thing new

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said for his vote, po­lit­i­cal par­ties must of­fer some­thing new. He said the past two po­lit­i­cal par­ties, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) have had com­mon ap­proach­es to crime-leg­isla­tive and sup­pres­sive ap­proach­es.  

“Over and over, a lot of re­search shows that you can’t solve the crime prob­lem that way alone. You have to deal with the pre­ven­ta­tive side. That has re­al­ly con­sis­tent­ly been the fail­ure of po­lit­i­cal par­ties.” 

He de­scribed it as a fail­ure on both the PNM and UNC to set their po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences aside and meet on the is­sue of crime two years ago. Then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Sep­tem­ber 2023 in­vit­ed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to meet on the is­sue. That year the coun­try end­ed with 577 mur­ders and even with a record high of 625 last year, nei­ther par­ty met to dis­cuss a so­lu­tion.  

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed al­so be­lieves that leg­is­la­tion is not the way for­ward. He called on Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to lead the charge and an­nounce the PNM’s plan to ad­dress crime.  

On a crime so­lu­tion, Mo­hammed said: “It can­not be leg­isla­tive­ly based on­ly. We can’t just sim­ply base it on leg­is­la­ture and base it on the Bail Act, and all of these things. We need to look at it from what is the root cause of crime. Crime is a run­away horse in this coun­try. Crime has af­fect­ed every sin­gle per­son that one could think about in one way or the oth­er.”