Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is set to ad­dress the na­tion to­day in one of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed con­ver­sa­tions in months. This is be­cause with the crime and mur­der rate con­tin­u­ing to surge, PM Row­ley on Fri­day sum­moned act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob to the Cab­i­net re­treat at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, where we ex­pect they had a vo­cif­er­ous dis­cus­sion on crime, which has tak­en this coun­try down a dark precipice. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds would no doubt have been part of that crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion.

While the de­tails of the meet­ing were kept close to the par­ties’ chests, it is ex­pect­ed PM Row­ley, who would have chaired the ses­sion as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, will give some dis­clo­sure to­day, know­ing full well that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to be dis­tressed by the crime wave.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ues to strug­gle with con­trol­ling the crime rate and, as cit­i­zens have seen over the last week, crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with im­puni­ty and a kind of brazen­ness that is as­tound­ing.

The lat­est such act came last week when a gun­man walked up to a wa­ter ven­dor at the in­ter­sec­tion of Broad­way and South Quay in Port-of-Spain in broad day­light and shot the man in the head. The gun­man then ran to­wards Sea Lots and es­caped, but the mere fact he could think to com­mit such an act in one of the busiest ar­eas of the city at­tests to the fact that crim­i­nals have ab­solute­ly no fear of law en­force­ment agen­cies or of pay­ing a heavy price for their trans­gres­sions.

Fur­ther­more, while the TTPS con­tin­ues to la­bel the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders as gang-re­lat­ed, the ex­tent to which in­di­vid­u­als who ap­pear to have no con­nec­tion to such ac­tiv­i­ty are al­so be­com­ing col­lat­er­al dam­age now has the av­er­age law-abid­ing cit­i­zen cow­er­ing in fear, afraid to leave their homes to con­duct the sim­plest of ac­tiv­i­ties.

How many times has this news­pa­per used this space to raise this on­go­ing sce­nario? Still, how­ev­er, the ques­tion re­mains as to when so­ci­ety will be able to rid it­self of this hor­ri­ble stain?

Truth be told, if the cur­rent trend is to be halt­ed, it will take an all-hands-on-deck ap­proach.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, many of the per­sons in whom cit­i­zens have vest­ed pow­er to make key de­ci­sions have made promis­es they are yet to achieve, choos­ing of­ten to take a par­ti­san ap­proach to deal­ing with a na­tion­al prob­lem that must be ad­dressed to the ben­e­fit of all.

In this re­gard, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Re­gion­al Ar­mour’s re­cent meet­ing with Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard is a good sign. Fol­low­ing that ses­sion, AG Ar­mour pledged to pro­vide DPP Gas­pard with the re­sources he needs to op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly.

CoP Ja­cob and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Hinds, how­ev­er, must be held to ac­count for their fail­ure to de­liv­er de­spite the fi­nan­cial re­sources they ac­quire an­nu­al­ly. On the Gov­ern­ment side, giv­en the re­cent de­feat of the Bail Amend­ment Bill, we hope the AG is now al­so de­vis­ing a new swath of leg­is­la­tion to take to par­lia­ment de­signed to keep the re­peat crim­i­nal of­fend­ers off the streets.

The time for ex­cus­es is long over. So, we await to see what PM Row­ley has in store for us in terms of a crime strat­e­gy to­day.