Crime – political football for 2020

THE EDITOR: As the countdown to general election 2020 heats up, crime is the political football of choice for scoring that winning goal.

We have the blood and gore, the bullets, the illegal firearms, the dead bodies lying in the road, the weeping relatives and the public fighting for space to catch the eye of photographers.

It is the best show on the road. Violent crime is front page news in the rolling competition for selling newspapers. The crimes are all the more horribly exciting if the police manage to do deadly damage to several perpetrators.

So what is the remedy for the crime surges? They cannot be predicted. There is no way of knowing when, where and how a domestic violence case will become a murder closely followed by suicide.

As recently reported, who can possibly know up front that it was dangerous to be liming in the company of the wife of a deceased notorious bandit? There were innocent deaths. The woman is still alive.

If the Commissioner of Police and the Minister of National Security have no crystal ball to give date, time and year that gang warfare will disappear, any political party can issue a sanctimonious press release bemoaning the “ineptness.” One cannot just go and kill or arrest every citizen with a rap sheet. A state of emergency, regardless how small, has severe consequences for the economy. That PR person should be fired regarding ineptness to facilitate credible political image.

Crime, some days worse than others, has been with us for a couple generations. No political party, big or small, can provide 100 per cent employment with no retrenchment. None.

Here in TT there are many psycho/sociological elements driving the crime surges that must be addressed as we move forward. Time is of the essence for fixing crime and criminality.

I consider it an own goal when any political party wishes to fool a discerning public that it has all the answers. In a struggling Third World society, criminal tendencies must be curbed in childhood. Education is key. Knowledge is power.

This is TT. In our unique political climate driven by power play, a liar is viewed as being far worse than a thief.

LYNETTE JOSEPH

Diego Martin