Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been set­ting a dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent tone late­ly with re­gard to the crime sit­u­a­tion and now ap­pears to be tak­ing the lead in the fight against crim­i­nals.

At the re­cent Cana­da-Cari­com Sum­mit in Ot­tawa, Dr Row­ley felt the ex­plo­sion in the use of il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion in acts of vi­o­lence by crim­i­nals was so bad that he sought the help of Cana­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau in the fight to curb the prob­lem.

As he made a call for help, he point­ed to the fact that the po­lice had found sev­er­al high-pow­ered weapons in San­ta Cruz.

Dr Row­ley’s view of how dire the sit­u­a­tion was proved dif­fer­ent from the view of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who said she hoped the gun dis­cov­ery would lead to a rise in pub­lic con­fi­dence “that we are in­deed ca­pa­ble of do­ing what we are man­dat­ed to do”. Where the Com­mis­sion­er was see­ing a vic­to­ry, Dr Row­ley was see­ing cause for con­cern.

Fol­low­ing the mur­ders of eight peo­ple in a 24-hour pe­ri­od be­tween Sun­day night and Mon­day, Dr Row­ley has once again tak­en a po­si­tion of con­cern, telling the coun­try that the mur­der spree has gone be­yond con­cern­ing to ridicu­lous.

His promise to dri­ve law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to hunt down and dis­arm the per­pe­tra­tors was quick­ly fol­lowed by a meet­ing with se­nior po­lice and mil­i­tary staff yes­ter­day.

Dr Row­ley al­so made it a case to show the coun­try that he was step­ping up his ef­forts against crime by ac­com­pa­ny­ing the Coast Guard on an all-night pa­trol aboard the TTS Scar­bor­ough last week.

This re­flects well on the Prime Min­is­ter as some­one lead­ing from the front. It is, how­ev­er, just the start.

Dr Row­ley’s con­cerns and promis­es to fix the ridicu­lous sit­u­a­tion we are now in ring hol­low on the ba­sis of his pre­vi­ous de­ci­sions, in­clud­ing the ap­point­ment and re­new­al of the cur­rent po­lice com­mis­sion­er, who, de­spite promis­es of im­prove­ment, has not made any dent in crime what­so­ev­er.

Dr Row­ley must al­so re­view his stance to have Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds lead crime talks with the Op­po­si­tion, talks which now need to be placed on the front burn­er to seek the types of leg­isla­tive sup­port need­ed to pass the right bills in the Par­lia­ment.

The sense­less killings in the last four days start­ed with that of a mur­der ac­cused, who had al­so com­mit­ted an­oth­er se­ri­ous crime while out on bail.

Dr Row­ley him­self has ex­pressed con­cern in the past about the hand­i­caps in the le­gal sys­tem in en­sur­ing that those who should be be­hind bars are there. This is an area that re­quires se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion with the head of the Ju­di­cia­ry and the nec­es­sary re­sources be­ing made avail­able to ad­dress it.

We trust that as the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Prime Min­is­ter will con­tin­ue to lead on the crime front. His ut­ter­ances so far are cer­tain­ly more in keep­ing with re­al­i­ty than what we have been hear­ing from oth­ers.

He must en­sure, though, that there is no let up un­til we be­gin to re­alise tan­gi­ble ef­forts against the sick­en­ing sit­u­a­tion which threat­ens to de­rail all oth­er gains we make as a na­tion.