Horrific milestone

FOR THE second year in this country’s history, the murder toll has surpassed 600.

Not only is this a horrific milestone, but it is also a mark of the profound depths to which we have sunk. The very soul of the nation is in peril.

Should the toll matter?

A few days before Christmas, Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds suggested citizens – and particularly the media – are wrong to pay so much attention to homicides.

“Whether fair or unfair, the reality is that over the years, it has developed that the people of Trinidad and Tobago and the media do use the reality of murders and murder figures as the litmus test, the yardstick as you put it, to determine the affairs of crime in TT,” he said.

The minister is right, in the sense that a single murder is one too many. And lives should not be reduced to mere tolls and numbers.

But the crossing of 600 murders twice in a span of three years is a litmus test that nobody, including Mr Hinds, can ignore. This would be true even if the all-time high figure was not surpassed.

Even in so-called “crimes of passion” there is a role to be played by the State. The policies of the government of the day affect deterrence, detection, prosecution, incarceration and rehabilitation.

Yet, in relation to these areas, the only consistent theme we have seen is a propensity by the government to point fingers at the opposition. However, the diversion of more resources to each does not require constitutional reform or special legislation.

Mr Hinds, who is not returning to political life once the current Parliament is dissolved, may well have checked out. To some extent, he is a lame-duck figure within the Cabinet, sitting alongside Keith Scotland. That does not absolve either, or any other minister, of their duty to do more than simply throw their hands up and wait for the police to do better.

Attorney General Reginald Armour’s recent trumpeting of the government’s “success” in fending off challenges to the legality of the appointment of top cop Erla Harewood-Christopher begins to look premature.

Ms Harewood-Christopher, who aged out of the police service last year and is subject to an annual extension by the Cabinet, is not responsible for decades of breakdown in the national security apparatus, government and judiciary.

But it is under her tenure, and that of Dr Rowley, that we have crossed this Rubicon.

Speaking with this newspaper on December 23, Deputy Commissioner of Police Junior Benjamin suggested the key to course correction is “community partnership.”

That is undoubtedly true.

But alongside this, and urgently needed now, is a focused infusion of resources into the criminal justice system in its entirety. The toll does matter. And it is unacceptable.

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