Trinidad and Tobago, we are being told by the country’s media houses, is in the throes of a crime wave which, according to reports emanating from the twin island republic, threatens to significantly loosen the hands of the authorities on law and order. Indeed, some of the more unpalatable media reportage on crime in the twin-island Republic sends messages which strongly suggest that it is the perpetrators of the crimes rather than the institutions responsible for law and order that hold the greater sway.
Much of the crime, which includes a generous measure of clinical killings is perpetrated by well-armed gangs who are, it seems, animated by the ‘high’ that they derive from the carnage that they create. One particular ‘signature’ of their modus operandi are episodes of daring like home invasions that frequently metamorphose in cold-blooded murder. There are times when the gunmen ‘up’ their ‘game’ to chilling levels, one recent gruesome example of heinous escalation being, reportedly, the ‘invasion’ of a hospital by an armed gang apparently bent on ‘finishing’ a ‘target’ wounded in an earlier on-the-street incident.
When criminals can cast aside the presumed immunity that places of healing ought to enjoy from violence, that, most assuredly, is an unmistakable indication that criminal activity in the twin-island Republic manifests itself in levels of brinkmanship that are difficult for law-abiding citizens to fathom. Their brazen messages, seemingly, are intended to demonstrate to the forces of law and order that it is they, the criminals, who are possessed of a monopoly of force.
Across much of the rest of the Caribbean Community, the respective countries would have to be dwelling in a condition of fitful slumber not to recognize that the historical closeness of ‘the Community’ makes it difficult for the rest of the region to turn its backs to what, these days, are manifestations of crime in Trinidad and Tobago that are not only gruesome in their manifestation but are also insidious to the state itself. A point, one would think, has been reached where, in the context of our collective responsibility for the CARICOM family, we can no longer blissfully pretend that Trinidad and Tobago’s crime challenge is none of our business.
Reportage on crime in sections of the T&T media send chilling messages of episodes of public slaughter in crime-ridden communities. Much of this is underpinned by gang rivalries which, every so often, turn streets and communities into killing fields, the intensity of the outbursts ‘back-footing’ the forces of law and order and, in effect, surrendering the streets to mayhem. This, at least, is the picture painted by the crime reports that emanate from the twin-island republic.
Underpinning the reportage is the unmistakable message that much of the citizenry must be considerably traumatized by the scale, intensity and murderous dimensions of the gruesome acts of violence that manifest themselves with monotonous regularity. When, for example, criminals can dispense no immunity to hospitals as ‘legitimate’ targets for wider street violence, such actions move beyond routine acts of violence, becoming insidious challenges to the state itself.
As the circumstances in T&T so clearly illustrate, crime, not infrequently, assumes the proportions of a national plague, the effects of which often extend far beyond the geographical spaces in which the crimes are committed. They generate a range of negative responses in societies as a whole. What, perhaps more than anything else, illustrates the sense of national alarm over the scale and intensity of violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago, is the reported recent pronouncement by a Trinidad and Tobago businessman, Chief Executive Officer of the American Chamber of Commerce of Trinidad and Tobago, Stuart Franco that the country’s business community is ‘willing to assist the government fighting crime.” (TT Guardian, June 9, 2024.)
The Guardian report, understandably, provides no details as to how the private sector proposes to support the legitimate law enforcement institutions, a matter that raises questions about the kind of role which the business community can play in rolling back a crime spree that has become both increasingly intense and brutal in its manifestation, and which, one might think, with the best will in the world, the business community would be considerably challenged to play an effective role in helping to rein in. That said, the very offer by the CEO to have the business community ‘chip in’ to help roll back the crime wave points to a view that the substantive forces of law and order, alone, are insufficient to tender an adequate response. That is a deeply distressing sign.
Back in November last year, Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley had declared that “notwithstanding the persistent efforts of the various state machinery, the selection of violence as a way of life, the love affair and glamorization of firearms and the wanton disregard for human life in Trinidad and Tobago has now gone beyond concerning to the ridiculous.” Such a statement, coming from a regional Head of Government, is disturbing insofar as it sends an unmistakable message of frustration over the fact that up to this time, the authorities have seemingly failed to tame the beast of violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago.
Here, the question arises as to whether the disturbing sluggishness that has always been commonplace in the speed (or lack thereof) that has characterized the behaviour of member countries is not again evident in the patent lack of evidence that the region, “alarmed by the epidemic of crime and violence in the Caribbean, fueled by illegal guns and organized criminal gangs, as a threat to our democracy and the stability of our societies” has, since then, lifted a collective finger to begin to “address crime and violence as a public health issue as they undertook to do at the April 2023 CARICOM summit in Port-of –Spain.”
Surely, an insidious challenge to the state of Trinidad and Tobago, being one of the lessons that can be derived from the ‘chamber of horrors’ that manifests itself on Trinidad and Tobago’s law enforcement tapestry and which, for different reasons, may well appear to threaten other countries in the region, is sufficient to cause the institution of CARICOM itself to act with haste and decisiveness to roll back the monster of a pattern of crime that, at times, and in terms of its intensity and gruesomeness, would appear to be challenging Trinidad and Tobago with incremental impunity.