Islandwide emergency with zero urgency

Paolo Kernahan

After sharing the story of my armed robbery online, it became immediately clear that I am not special.

Countless victims came forward on my Facebook post sharing accounts of their ordeals. So I'm just another prey item in a dystopian Caribbean gangster's paradise – one in which safety and personal freedoms have been stripped from citizens by growing numbers of omnipresent hyenas.

I was also reminded this past week of friends who've suffered the ultimate loss at the hands of these criminals. I know two different people who lost parents to seemingly unplanned acts of violence that began as some haphazard attempt at robbery.

It's difficult to imagine ever recovering from that quality of trauma. There's no picking up the pieces. Life doesn't just trundle on. The best you can hope for is, perhaps, fashioning some sort of new, sputtering beginning from the wreckage of smouldering anger and hurt.

The widespread criminality of multiple acts of petty theft, armed robbery, and home invasions every single day on this law-forsaken island isn't normal, even if we behave like it is. This is the culmination of a failure over decades to aggressively treat a growing cancer.

The criminals among us today were made. They didn't spring up organically, merely as the natural output of a modern, consumerist society with once-considerable wealth and attendant socio-economic imbalances. We're reaping the whirlwind of corruption, incompetence, and political manipulation.

Yes, crime is a feature of most contemporary societies. Of course, many choose a path of no good.

However, what law-abiding citizens in TT are suffering goes far beyond the innate evil that lurks in the hearts of men. The ongoing criminal insurrection, while caused by many factors, boils down to one simple truth – we failed to diligently weed the soil before they overwhelmed the crop.

What's interesting is that society has accepted the murder rate as the sole benchmark of criminality. It is, after all, the most heinous of all crimes.

This fixation on homicides by the media, the police, the government, and the public gives a decidedly skewed picture of what's happening here. It has the effect of "minimising" the true extent of criminal activity – even though we're confronted with images and reports of other crimes across conventional and social media every day.

If there are minor variations in the murder rate from one month to the next compared to the previous year, the hierarchy in the police are quick to interpret this as a reduction in crime. Any downward trend, no matter how small, is typically attributed to police interventions.

If, at the end of 2023, we should fall short of last year's record-high murder toll, it's reasonable to predict that CoP Erla Harewood-Christopher will claim this as a win.

However, in other countries criminality is measured as the number of crimes – all crimes – committed against citizens per 100,000 population.

In 2023 there were more than 2,000 robberies and larcenies.

According to a survey reported to have been done by the TTPS, more than 50 per cent of the crimes committed in this country go unreported. People either don't trust the police or they fear retaliation from their victimisers.

Either way, the picture of crime is far worse than our obsession with the murder rate reveals.

What's going on in the country right now feels like a mass co-ordinated looting of the population. Criminals are emboldened to pounce in unison because they know the police can't possibly be everywhere. Moreover, the judiciary is so fatally flawed that even if they're apprehended, their chances of being successfully prosecuted are slim.

As the planned "crime talks" between the government and opposition died on the vine, as predicted, politicians behaved in a manner entirely detached from the reality we're living. The PM says on the front page of a newspaper, "The crime wave is a political bonanza for the UNC." What on earth is that supposed to mean to us, the food supply for these beasts on the ground?

For her part, the opposition leader implied that the PM has a tabanca for the former CoP. All this madness continues because politicians are largely immune to the criminality and threats ordinary plebs deal with daily. We pay for their security while we pay for our insecurity with our lives and property.

Still, we are divided by tribal politics while politicians are united in their indifference and contempt for the public. Into this yawning gap, criminals make lucrative lives and in so doing diminish the quality of ours; if not taking them outright.