We, the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of T&T, are not free. Our free­dom and peace of mind have been snatched away by blood­thirsty crim­i­nals.

While we pray for pro­tec­tion be­hind locked doors, bur­glar-proofed win­dows and elec­tron­ic gates, des­per­ate­ly hop­ing to be shield­ed by se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems, law­break­ers have the run of our streets.

Brazen and in­hu­mane, demon­strat­ing the ex­tent of their de­prav­i­ty with the wan­ton slaugh­ter of even the in­no­cents, crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to out­run a jus­tice sys­tem that is in­ef­fi­cient and of­ten in­sen­si­tive to the cries of the peo­ple.

Free from fear of ex­e­cu­tion or life­time in­car­cer­a­tion, mur­der­ers with easy ac­cess to so­phis­ti­cat­ed as­sault weapons are able to con­tin­ue func­tion­ing in the un­der­world, even from be­hind prison walls. With as­ton­ish­ing ease, they or­der ex­e­cu­tions, di­rect­ing their crim­i­nal min­ions to tar­gets on their hit lists in a reign of ter­ror over these is­lands that nei­ther po­lice nor politi­cians seem able to end.

They have stolen our free­dom. They have stolen our peace. If we al­low them to, they will steal what lit­tle sem­blance of sta­bil­i­ty we still have left.

As dif­fi­cult as it is to wrap one’s mind around the Heights of Gua­napo quadru­ple killings—that hor­rif­ic slaugh­ter of three chil­dren and a 19-year-old—even hard­er to con­tem­plate are the grief and tor­ment of the sur­vivors of that mas­sacre.

Long af­ter ac­counts of that mid­night slaugh­ter fade from the head­lines and drift in­to the re­cess­es of na­tion­al mem­o­ry, these fam­i­ly mem­bers who have been so bru­tal­ly be­reaved, will strug­gle with the emo­tion­al bur­den of this in­ci­dent.

For them and thou­sands of oth­er sur­vivors of this type of car­nage, which is char­ac­terised by the un­speak­able vi­o­lence of bul­lets and blood, words of com­fort and promis­es of ac­tion have been re­peat­ed so of­ten that they are now de­void of mean­ing.

As al­ways, at these times when a par­tic­u­lar­ly hor­ren­dous crime rocks this na­tion, there will be nu­mer­ous peo­ple with plen­ty to say.

There will be po­lit­i­cal­ly in­spired at­tempts at blam­ing and sham­ing, the­o­ries and rec­om­men­da­tions from all kinds of ex­perts, and ex­hor­ta­tions from re­li­gious lead­ers, all mixed in with the din of so­cial me­dia lamen­ta­tions and ridicule.

How­ev­er, amid all that noise and fury, too few are the peo­ple pre­pared to act, the men and women will­ing to do more to dri­ve away the crim­i­nals and de­mand ac­tion and re­sults from those in po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty.

Pre­dictably, some of the frus­tra­tion and rage of this mo­ment will be vent­ed at the most­ly silent and in­vis­i­ble Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and the some­times eva­sive Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

But there are so many oth­ers who need to be chal­lenged and held to ac­count.

In­stead of fo­cus­ing on­ly on the fail­ure and in­ac­tiv­i­ty of those few, it is time for a wider cam­paign to weed out the peo­ple in league with the crim­i­nals, some func­tion­ing at dif­fer­ent lev­els in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, oth­ers in po­si­tions of fi­nan­cial and le­gal in­flu­ence and those in so­ci­ety in gen­er­al.

Cit­i­zens must de­mand that politi­cians stop their fu­tile pos­tur­ing and get down to the ur­gent task of plug­ging loop­holes in laws and ex­pe­di­tious­ly pass­ing tougher an­ti-crime laws.

Once and for all, the Ju­di­cia­ry must be fixed, the pe­nal sys­tem re­formed and pro­grammes and poli­cies to make life dif­fi­cult for the law­less must be im­ple­ment­ed.

The mis­cre­ants who are tram­pling up­on and plun­der­ing T&T must be stopped. It is time to take back our free­dom from the crim­i­nals.