Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ex­pres­sion of con­fi­dence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in his In­de­pen­dence Day toast to the na­tion might have been words of en­cour­age­ment for those of­fi­cers and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

How­ev­er, not many cit­i­zens are con­vinced by claims of re­cent crime-fight­ing suc­cess­es and have not seen that “light at the end of the tun­nel.”

Dr Row­ley, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, may be in pos­ses­sion of da­ta show­ing a down­ward trend in mur­ders and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes. It was prob­a­bly on that ba­sis he en­dorsed the CoP’s claim of a ze­ro per cent in­crease in the mur­der rate and an 11 per cent drop in se­ri­ous crimes for the year so far.

That might be why he so op­ti­misti­cal­ly de­clared: “If the ef­forts are sus­tained, if the new meth­ods are utilised and if we gen­uine­ly be­lieve we have the in­tegri­ty to con­front the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, at the end of the day the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will pre­vail and this pe­ri­od of chal­lenge will be a pe­ri­od to be looked up­on and say there were times we were chal­lenged but in­deed we did suc­ceed.”

How­ev­er, for the av­er­age cit­i­zen, view­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and guid­ed on­ly by sta­tis­tics in the pub­lic do­main, no re­lief can be seen.

In­stead, there is the dark­ness of T&T ranked among the most vi­o­lent na­tions in the world and still on track to meet or ex­ceed last year’s record-break­ing mur­der count of 605.

On In­de­pen­dence Day, when Dr Row­ley raised that very op­ti­mistic toast to the TTPS, the mur­der count stood at 392 — the lat­est homi­cide, the fa­tal shoot­ing of Ab­del Roberts, oc­curred in Waller­field just hours be­fore the na­tion turned 61.

The count has in­creased since then to 398.

Last Wednes­day, at a TTPS me­dia brief­ing, CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher high­light­ed re­cent crime fight­ing achieve­ments, stick­ing to the reg­u­lar­ly re­peat­ed nar­ra­tive that se­ri­ous crime is on the de­cline.

It is not a claim that has been ac­cept­ed by the pop­u­la­tion and even the ex­perts are not con­vinced.

Some of the coun­try’s lead­ing crim­i­nol­o­gists have warned that the 2023 mur­der count could be the same as last year — or worse.

In re­cent in­ter­views with this news­pa­per, Dr Keron King called for an ev­i­dence-based ap­proach to crime re­duc­tion and Dar­ius Figuera, while hop­ing the re­duc­tion seen in Ju­ly con­tin­ued in Au­gust, ad­mit­ted he does not feel safe in this coun­try.

Al­so ex­press­ing pes­simism was Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran, a for­mer head of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, who warned that the bru­tal­i­ty, vi­o­lent mur­ders and fear­less­ness with which home in­va­sions and oth­er crimes are be­ing com­mit­ted, are tak­ing T&T in­to the realm of do­mes­tic ter­ror­ism.

The re­al­i­ty is that the av­er­age cit­i­zen, even with homes equipped with bur­glar alarms, se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, bar­ri­cad­ed doors and win­dows, and guard dogs, does not feel safe.

And it is not on­ly the in­creased risk of vi­o­lent home in­va­sions. There is dan­ger on the streets as crim­i­nal gangs bat­tle for turf, tak­ing down their un­der­world ri­vals along with in­no­cent by­standers in their dead­ly gun­fights.

If there is any light it is still large­ly ob­scured by al­most dai­ly shed­ding of blood and the rel­a­tive­ly low de­tec­tion and con­vic­tion rate.

For many, there­fore, the dark­ness still pre­vails and they are still search­ing for the light.