In 1998, Ja­maican reg­gae artiste Siz­zla Kalon­ji (Miguel Collins) re­leased the song I’m not sure.

In it Siz­zla sings: “I’m not sure if I will live to see to­mor­row

Liv­ing in this world of con­flicts and sor­rows

Bod­ies lay cold as gun­men strike bold”

At the time Siz­zla re­leased that song, the mur­der toll in T&T was 98.

This, how­ev­er, pales in com­par­i­son to the cur­rent state of af­fairs in this coun­try, where we record­ed 98 mur­ders with­in the first few months of the year.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s sta­tis­tics for this year, by the end of Feb­ru­ary, this coun­try’s mur­der toll was 88. By the end of March, the mur­der toll was 125, ac­cord­ing to the TTPS.

As it cur­rent­ly stands, the mur­der count in T&T has passed 542 and we are on course to record the blood­i­est year in our his­to­ry.

The cur­rent high­est mur­der toll in T&T in a sin­gle year was in 2008, when we record­ed 550 mur­ders.

Our mur­der toll in 2022 rep­re­sents a more than 400 per cent in­crease when com­pared to 1998.

Crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in T&T is a run­away horse, a fact nei­ther the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice nor the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can de­ny, no mat­ter how much they try to sug­ar-coat fig­ures sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise.

An ex­am­ple of where we are as a coun­try was wit­nessed yes­ter­day, when cit­i­zens dri­ving along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way were faced with the grue­some dis­cov­ery of a de­cap­i­tat­ed head near the Mau­si­ca in­ter­sec­tion.

It would, there­fore, not be sur­pris­ing if many cit­i­zens sub­con­scious­ly re­peat Siz­zla’s words of un­cer­tain­ty of sur­vival amid bold­faced crim­i­nals tot­ing high-pow­ered weapons every day.

Apart from the killings and the grue­some dis­cov­er­ies, one of our low­est points for the year with re­spect to crime was when video footage emerged of the chil­dren of Rose Hill RC Pri­ma­ry School ly­ing on the floor of their class­room while war­ring gang­sters opened fire be­yond the school’s walls.

So, it was heart­en­ing to see Siz­zla and his coun­try­man and fel­low artiste Caple­ton (Clifton Bai­ley III) vis­it Rose Hill,

St Barb’s Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and the

Mor­vant/Laven­tille Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day.

The tour was co-or­di­nat­ed by Project Build­ing Blocks (PBB), which op­er­ates un­der the am­bit of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with lo­cal pro­mot­er Matthew Dasent and the artistes’ man­age­ment teams.

PBB’s Out­reach Su­per­vi­sor Gary Grant de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as, “A pub­lic health ap­proach to treat­ing with crime and vi­o­lence.”

He clar­i­fied fur­ther, “The same way you would treat with an in­fec­tious dis­ease, is the same way we treat with vi­o­lence with­in the East Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty. We in­ter­rupt vi­o­lence and we al­so de­tect vi­o­lence. We give them treat­ment through dif­fer­ent pro­grammes and ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Siz­zla and Caple­ton, along with Co­coa Tea (Calvin Scott) and An­tho­ny B (Kei­th Blair), are in Trinidad for a con­cert at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah this week­end.

We thus ap­plaud all those in­volved in yes­ter­day’s ini­tia­tive to bring pos­i­tive vibes to the pupils, es­pe­cial­ly those of Rose Hill RC who are still re­cov­er­ing from the trau­ma of their in­ci­dent.