Rowley: Trinidad and Tobago blindsided by crime

THE Prime Minister has blamed the crime onslaught on this society's past failure to predict the crisis.

He was addressing a Caricom symposium at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain on Monday, titled Violence as a Public Health Issue – the Crime Challenge.

Dr Rowley said, "Violence in the Caribbean is a public health emergency which threatens our lives, our economies, our national security and by extension every aspect of our well-being."

He lamented the prevalence of petty theft, school violence, home invasions, domestic violence, sexual abuse, human trafficking, drive-by shootings, drug-gang warfare and revenge murders.

"When the situation arrives at the door, it is said there was a failure of the society to spot the oncoming crisis.

"Then there may be a later failure to perceive the extent of that arrived situation as a societal problem.

"Today, if there's one aspect we may all be guilty of (it) is that the problem of criminality and violence was not dealt with sufficiently in a much earlier timeframe – in the homes, in the schools, in the prisons, in the courts and I dare say in the Parliaments."

Rowley lamented the evolution of a creeping normalisation of lower standards.

"We allowed slow, moderate, deviant behavioural trends to increase.

"We allowed slips in our age-old standards, ethical and moral norms in our family homes, in our schools, in public institutions, and our roads and in public places – all of which, in hindsight, reminds us that we should have checked very early. Instead, we seem to have been saying, 'These times are different.'"

He mulled this age of American gun culture, amid the internet revolution with its tremendous promises and all its warts.

"An age of selfish individualism has been allowed to flourish, at the expense of society itself.

"So morals and values are now considered flexible. Their lines are blurred and they occupy spheres of their own, determined by one's personal whims, the present fashionable trends, and, worse, the political and bureaucratic shortcomings of something malleable called 'the system.'"

Rowley said with a cross-section of Caribbean inputs, the conference would try to address the issue of crime and violence as a public health issue.

"Hopefully, there will be elements of operational consensus, after the planned examination and exchanges, which will form a plan of action that will give the Caribbean people their much-needed assurance that something beyond talk will be done, using the same plans, programmes and strategic methods that were adopted to confront the deadly challenges of covid19."

Earlier, the PM noted three ministers of national security, five under the former People's Partnership government and one under the Patrick Manning administration, to say that crime has not abated and that it did not depend on individual ministers, in a seeming defence of Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds.

Noting 5,439 murders in Trinidad and Tobago from 2011-2022, including 600 last year, he said the homicide death toll was overtaken only by covid19. He revealed the health cost of violent crime as including $170,000 to surgically treat a head wound, $135,000 a chest wound and $100,000 a leg wound.

"Violent behaviour, violent crime, violent crime involving the use of firearms, the associated individual and group mental health trauma accompanying violent behaviour, so ever-present amongst us now, pose a far greater destructive threat than these diseases (such as yellow fever), and on that basis alone qualifies violence as a public health emergency."

He said regional countries were under siege by acts of violence by criminal minorities creating atmospheres of "fear, despondency, trauma, surrender, and hopelessness."

He urged, "This is a battle in which we must all be engaged. This is a war that we cannot afford to lose."

Saying some may accuse governments of indifference, impotence, unimaginative planning, discrimination, abdication of duty and poor leadership, amid calls for resignations, Rowley hit, "Ole talk is cheap. We know that, but let us try and extract some light from the expressions of the next two days, in the fervent hope and expectation that the beast of violence, which has stalked us for virtually all our existence in this blue Caribbean Sea, will be starved of its sustenance, condemned to wither and die."

The two-day event also features addresses by Caricom chairman and Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis, Jamaica PM Andrew Holness, Barbados PM Mia Mottley, St Lucia PM Phillip J Pierre, St Kitts and Nevis PM Dr Terrance Drew, St Vincent and the Grenadines PM Dr Ralph Gonsalves, Grenada PM Dickon Mitchell, and Dominica PM Roosevelt Skerrit.

Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, leading her MPs at the event, later told reporters she was so far unimpressed, but out of respect for other Caricom leaders present, she would await the conference's outcome.

"I don't see anything going forward for action."

She said Rowley's remark that murders were bad last year and could get worse was "an expression of hopelessness."

Persad-Bissessar said she'd like to see the conference generate an action plan against crime, not just talk on things everyone already knew.

"The Prime Minister should have given us some indication, 'We know this is it, this is what it is, but we want to consider today: one, two, three, four, five.'

"What we'd like to see today is an action plan. At the end of the day you analyse and come up with an action plan, and then of course implement the action plan."

She disagreed with Rowley's criticism of her plan to split the Ministry of National Security into two units (Ministries of Defence and Home Affairs), though she said the current ministry was clearly overburdened. Persad-Bissessar accused the Government of ignoring the Opposition's suggestions on crime.

"People are mortally afraid. The country is in dire straits.

"Yes, Caricom can help us, but we have unique issues. How can it help us with our porous borders? How can it help us with the under-resourcing and under-staffing of the Office of the DPP? (And) all the other things – the TTPS." She also named the judiciary and fire service as national issues.

She scoffed at TT (alongside other Caricom nations) joining Mexico's lawsuit against US gun manufacturers, asking if TT would also sign on to an anti-knife or anti-cutlass lawsuit. "It is total nonsense. That case was already lost. What is TT doing there?"

Persad-Bissessar did not view crime as a public health issue, but as a national-security issue and a socioeconomic issue.

"We have to deal with the economy, we have to deal with education and with youth. We have to give opportunities for all. If we don't deal with that, calling it a public health issue will give us what? Will you take a valium?

"It is not a public heath issue but it causes public health issues.

"The whole premise of this symposium, in my respectful view, is misguided."

Asked about a possible state of emergency, she said she would await the conference outcome, but reiterated the need for an action plan.

Persad-Bissessar said after a Caricom agricultural symposium held in TT, this country had not yet submitted its report, as she wondered if the current event would end similarly.