While much of the reportage on the current ‘crime spree’ that has gripped CARICOM member country, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), has focused on its impact on the country’s business community, some analysts are insisting that a thought be spared for the ‘average Joe /Josephine’ whose only wish is to live in a society where the extent of his/her worry is confined to living in a well-ordered environment.
Over the past few months the business community has been having its say on the issue of ‘staying safe’ and the protection of property. More recently, reportage in the media in T&T suggests that there exists an equal measure of concern by people who simply want to walk the streets and go to bed at nights without constantly being in the grip of uneasiness.
Truth be told, there can hardly be a grimmer assessment of the security bona fides of any other CARICOM country, save and except Haiti, where the long-term fragility of the public safety regime is an extension of the historical circumstances that preceded the present regime of unmitigated lawlessness. Trinidad and Tobago, by contrast has always been known for its rumbustious high-spiritedness that goes with the country’s Carnival.
An article published in the Trinidad Guardian earlier this week under the pen of Geisha Kowlessar would very much appear to speak for the ‘average Joe/Josephine’ who, it seems, may now have reached the conclusion that (as the writer puts it) “no place is considered safe in T&T, as crime seems to be on the minds of everyone despite what appears to be the best efforts of law enforcement, stakeholders and many citizens.” This sentiment (according to The Guar-dian article) was echoed by the Chief Operating Officer of the country’s Coalition of Services and Industries, Dianne Joseph.
A measure of the extent of what appears to be the ‘season’ of unmitigated lawlessness that appears to have gripped parts of the twin-island Republic is reflected, first, in reportage in the T&T media of ‘gangsters’ taking their business to a hospital to reportedly ‘hunt down’ an injured adversary, and more recently, threats by petrol station owners/operators to cease (presumably temporarily) the night-time sale of petrol for security reasons.
Up to this time we have been unable to pursue any kind of cogent analysis of the crime situation in (parts of) Trinidad and Tobago though it must surely occur to us that there is no reason why pretty much the same situation cannot repeat itself –at one point in time or another – elsewhere in the region.
In the particular instance of Guyana, it is unlikely that the mindful observer would not quickly discern the coincidence between the extant crime situation in the twin-island Republic, and more particularly, the seeming inability of the police to effectively ‘push back’ against the crime wave and what, at this time, continues to be an ugly slide in the image of our own Guyana Police Force (GPF) that includes the unpalatable discoveries that continue to be made regarding members of the Force’s indulgence in crimes of one sort of another and the apparent failure by the authorities to stop the slide.
Truth be told, the nature of some of the irregularities in police operations – not least the blatant ‘shakedowns’ arising out of traffic-related transgressions – are worrying if only because these may well represent the starting point of an ignominious slide into a cesspool of assorted infractions. Here, it is not so much a matter of poking fingers in the eyes of the Police Force but causing the powers that be to understand that there exists the considered public view that the extant public view of our own Guyana Police Force is nothing to write home about.
And here it is not simply a matter of ‘picking’ on the Force but making the point that such operating weaknesses, as are detected, within the GPF could actually serve as a gaping door through which increased levels of all sorts of crimes – including some that can threaten aspects of the stability of the country – as a whole, can creep in and which, in the absence of effective mechanisms with which to fight them off, may bury themselves in the social fabric of a society which, many believe, does not take the issue of public security (and the security of the state) as seriously as it should.
To return to the most poignant point made by Ms. Joseph, in the matter of the rash of crime that continues to infect Trinidad and Tobago, her argument regarding the correctness of the society “to look towards the governors of our country for solutions” is well made. It is the same here with the expected responsibility of the incumbent political administration by the ‘average Guyanese Joe /Josephine’ to (as Ms. Joseph puts it) “look towards the governors of our country for solutions.” Here, we would do well to begin by tackling the glaring glitches in the image of our own Police Force.
