Crime in Trinidad & Tobago

I am compelled to write this piece in the hope that readers will not see it as fuel for a pointless argument, but rather so that people can acknowledge and make their own contributions so that we can try to educate those who seem to be fatalistically hard-headed, or just plain ignorant. To my non-Trinidadian readers, this is still worth a read, as i am sure many of the issues I intend to raise will apply to situations beyond the realm of Trinidad & Tobago.

Over the last decade or so, crime has increased exponentially in the nation. Per annum murder rates, as well as cases of rape, burglary, petty crime and the like, have all been on the steady upswing. Crime seems to be taken as a given nowadays; newspapers seem to have more important things to report about, such as soap opera politics, while crime reports come almost as afterthoughts. I recently saw an article about a double homicide on page 12 of a newspaper. People seem to have become desensitized to the situation. But before I address this, let me first try to shed some light as to why the extended crime spree is taking place.

The whole situation stems from the fostering of bad habits, from the household level to the government level, and is further fuelled by the lack of concern and wanton inaction by people to correct these bad habits. Furthermore, the narrowminded and disingenuous attitude toward the situation only serves to make for pointless banter; "spinnin' top in mud", as my father would say.

For starters, Trinibagonians are accustomed to having things too easy. No disrespect whatsoever to the many hard-working citizens who try to make an honest day's living, but anybody who has spent significant time in the country can tell you that Trinis are always "tryin' a ting" to make life a little easier for themselves. People would rather pay a licencing officer a couple hundred dollars to get a drivers licence "without the hassle" instead of going through the "painstaking" process of learning to drive properly. They are always looking for shortcuts. So how does this relate to crime? Well, people fail to understand that this kind of thinking filters into our everyday lives, to the way people bring up their children and the values that are instilled; this has become a part of our lives. So a disenfranchised youth who has to choose between mixing concrete and robbing his neighbour to get money, will choose the quick, easy way. This is what I believe is the motivation for many of the crimes being committed. Why work hard for it when we can save the energy and just steal it, or kidnap it, or kill for it ? Why get to know a girl and woo her when you can molest her and violate her ? Why work hard and take time to save when you can rob and swindle and have it all in quick time? This "tradition" of easy-getting has become perverted through generations of poverty, uncertainty and societal unrest, and so breeds crime.

But that is just one small piece of the pie. Such crimes could be controlled if proper law enforcement were in place to crack down on crimes. However, law enforcement is all but nonexistant in Trinidad & Tobago today. Police take hours to respond to calls; they are lazy, inefficient and often inadequately equipped or even trained to handle basic cases. What's more, as seems to be the trend among almost all bureaucratic occupations in the country, the levels of corruption are apalling. I know of one police officer who let several "PH" taxi drivers terrorize commuters with their road antics in a particular village, simply because he owned the cars they drove, and collected daily rental for their usage.

And the government seems to encourage such selfish and nonchalant behaviours. They do very little to improve the lives of people, particularly those whose lives are most in need of improvement, and so they almost give licence to people to commit crimes. Imagine, in a country which often boasts of being the richest in the Caribbean, a country with abundant oil-stained foreign exchange, there are still people who live in shanty towns, who have no regular supply of water or electricity, who cannot afford to send their children to school. The current prime minister once referred to the revamping of the nations water supply system as a "3billion dollar headache". Yet there was no head pain involved when they gave the green light for the completion of a multi-billion dollar sport facility (which was not needed), one which has to be written off as it has become un-finishable thanks to corruption and inefficiency. People in need who have to contend with wastefulness of governments must feel that they have little hope of being helped, and so may say t hat crime is the only way. Past and present governments have been fixated with dreams of making Trinidad and Tobago into an image of paradise, but have neglected the main components of this paradise: the people. They have been more concerned with pageants, summits, stadia, personalities, carnivals, puppet politics and neighbourhood relations, and they have expressly ignored the human condition and the factors that affect it. Solutions for unemployment? Hiring people to paint pebbles for three hours a day and sit and chat most of the time. Solution to the crime problem? Billions of dollars spent on useless second-hand equipment that does nothing but rile criminals up more.......

But for me, perhaps the saddest and most brazenly bold and unbelievably stupid aspect of the whole situation is the attitude of the population towards crime. Most people are desensitized towards it until they themselves or someone close to them falls victim to crime. They choose to ignore the situation and turn blind eyes or deaf ears. When they are affected, they hypocritically try to make a hullaballoo about their plight and only serve to amuse the uncaring and unrperturbed perpetrators. I once spoke to a friend about a string or murders that had occured in an area that we had freequented at one time. The friend told me, "That have nothing to do with me. Crime doesnt affect me, so I dont really care much about that whole thing". One month later, sad to say, that person's aunt was killed in a botched robbery attempt. The same non-caring friend suddenly jumped onto the anti-crime badwagon, criticizing the decay of society and pointing fingers.

Dear friends, I can go into more details and complex analyses, but the point has already been made. The country is the way it is because WE have made it that way, because of our actions, inactions, habits, attititudes, choices and policies. It is easy to sit around and lay blame and pine over specifics, but the fact is, crime affects all of us, and if we are willing to fight the good fight and stand up for what we know is right, and to change our preconceptions and our habits to facilitate our fellow men, then maybe we can save the country for our kids to enjoy...

But again, these are just my thoughts...what do you think ?