The disturbing reality in Trinidad and Tobago is its escalating criminality is now increasingly jeopardising the lives of innocent bystanders, this serving as a sobering reminder of how dangerous our homeland has become. Consequently, this troubling development is an imperative for many of us here in the GTA planning to visit for the upcoming Carnival festivities in February to be constantly alert and vigilant.
Despite the government’s attempts, and the Police Commissioner whose initial successes now appear to have plateaued, the number of murders in Trinidad and Tobago still continues to grow. Now, it seems murderers have added another gash to the nation’s wounds. Since the start of the new year, the emergence of a new trend in criminal effrontery left the media no room for understatement, with the latest brazen growth in murders being described as a “killing spree”.
Trinidad and Tobago appears to have taken a turn for the worse, with recent criminal arrogance placing sleepless nationals in an even more troubling space of precarity. At the end of last year, gunmen with high-powered weapons indiscriminately sprayed bullets into a group of people gathered in Port-of-Spain at the end of the workday. The aftermath left six persons wounded, and sadly, an innocent bystander was killed – a young mother awaiting public transportation to her home.
Yet another audacious killing spree occurred two weeks later, with the pulsing heart of the capital city again terrorised by gunmen indiscriminately firing into a group of persons. The fusillade left two persons dead, and six wounded.
The arbitrariness of the gunmen on missions of murder, in what appears to be hard-core, gang-related takedowns of targeted individuals, uncaring about whether the ensuing mayhem harmed innocent bystanders as collateral fallout, understandably left behind major resonances of shock, outrage, and significantly, terror.
Speaking with the media, one resident and an eye-witness described the firing methodology of the gunmen as “a spray-and-hit-everybody technique”. Another eyewitness at ground zero recalled with horror this was the second assault by gunmen in a public place in Port-of-Spain. Describing the action of the murderers as “madness”, this resident proclaimed that to ensure one’s safety, it was wise to stay indoors, and not venture outside.
For a national facing mortal danger to indicate that to be safe, and to not become another unsuspecting and innocent bystander killed by gunmen deploying a “spray-and-hit-everybody technique”, is through self-imposed seclusion within four walls of a house, is not a reassuring solution to the cancer now afflicting Trinidad and Tobago. In fact, this solution of self-inflicted sequestration is a worsening of the pathology, a metastasis, where criminality has infiltrated deeply into fundamental and State guaranteed freedoms as the well-being of the person, security, and mobility.
The recent admission of failure by the government, led by Prime Minister Keith Rowley, in its war on crime is not reassuring for nationals, and for the diaspora; it is also concerning for those of us travelling to Trinidad and Tobago next month. As Rowley admitted, “While [the government] would not have eliminated or even reduced murders as we have embarked upon, there are a lot of other things that the government has been successful at, so I would hope that the population will judge us on the broader canvas than this chronic problem that we are grappling with. We have not made the level of progress that the citizens expect and demand, and are entitled to; we are in fact facing an ongoing crime wave.”
It is also not reassuring that the nation’s National Security Minister, Stuart Young, last week chose to politicise crime, blaming the escalation of murders on an unnamed group’s desire to destabilise Trinidad and Tobago. These responses by both Young and Rowley were abject for its deflection and admission of failure.
We say again to our community members journeying to the homeland – be very alert and vigilant.