Re­cent com­men­tary on the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing crime rate in To­ba­go by for­mer heads of the To­ba­go polic­ing di­vi­sion sug­gests that the ame­lio­rat­ing re­quire­ments must in­volve a re­view of whether those cur­rent­ly po­si­tioned to lead any new polic­ing strate­gies on the is­land are the best peo­ple to do so.

The per­spec­tives of for­mer ACPs William Nurse and Ans­ley Gar­rick, are that To­ba­go’s cul­ture and fam­i­ly con­nec­tions im­pact how To­bag­on­ian po­lice of­fi­cers treat the prob­lem of crim­i­nal­i­ty on the is­land.

The is­land has record­ed its high­est homi­cide rate in mod­ern times, with 13 deaths so far this year.

Po­lice have warned that some of the re­cent killings could lead to reprisal hits.

For­mer ACP Nurse is con­vinced that po­lice in To­ba­go have not been putting enough fo­cus on the lo­calised gang cul­ture, al­though at least 20 gangs were iden­ti­fied there sev­er­al years ago.

To him, the prob­lem is the cul­ture of “bury­ing heads in the sand” in­stead of fac­ing the re­al­i­ty that To­ba­go has a se­ri­ous gang prob­lem.

For­mer ACP Gar­rick al­so be­lieves a large part of the prob­lem is that To­ba­go po­lice are afraid to deal with peo­ple they know, as prod­ucts of tight­ly knit­ted com­mu­ni­ties.

Gar­rick ar­gues that too many of­fi­cers are not “hard on their To­bag­on­ian folk be­cause it may be a fam­i­ly”.

A “stronger and more vig­or­ous re­sponse,” he be­lieves, must start with po­lice not be­ing coy to­wards ar­rest­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans.

While Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine has not been as di­rect­ed as these two of­fi­cers, he too has raised con­cerns about the kind of polic­ing he’s been wit­ness­ing on the is­land.

Last Thurs­day, Mr Au­gus­tine told the THA that some of the mur­der vic­tims ap­pear to be gang mem­bers “known to the po­lice” and called for more ef­forts that go be­yond “road­blocks.”

These are all damn­ing views on how To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly be­ing po­liced.

The head of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber, Cur­tis Williams, has al­so been plead­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to meet with them, point­ed­ly not­ing that they want­ed to speak to the top boss, not the To­ba­go di­vi­sion­al leader.

The po­si­tions of these for­mer and cur­rent lead­ers in polic­ing, busi­ness and pol­i­tics re­in­force the need for crit­i­cal crime talks in To­ba­go on the strate­gies for 2024 and be­yond.

By send­ing po­lice of­fi­cers from Trinidad to work with their To­bag­on­ian coun­ter­parts, Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher may have ini­ti­at­ed a good mea­sure based on what the for­mer ACPs have di­ag­nosed as the prob­lem.

But stop­gap mea­sures will on­ly achieve short-term goals.

Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher must now an­swer the call to lead sound and hon­est dis­cus­sions about crime in To­ba­go that would de­ter­mine the best strate­gies and per­son­nel to sup­press the gang and homi­cide prob­lems ef­fec­tive­ly.

Un­der the THA Act, all el­e­ments of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are cen­tralised and do not fall un­der the man­date of the THA in its se­mi-au­tonomous state.

The head of the To­ba­go Polic­ing Di­vi­sion, ACP Col­lis Hazel, an­swers di­rect­ly to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

De­spite the best ef­forts of the THA to ad­dress the so­cial as­pects that cre­ate fer­tile grounds for crime, the buck stops with the Com­mis­sion­er and her team where sup­pres­sion of crim­i­nal­i­ty is con­cerned.