Since Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s rev­e­la­tion on Mon­day that some po­lice of­fi­cers in this coun­try lock them­selves in sta­tions at night and hide from crim­i­nals, he has faced back­lash from sev­er­al sec­tors of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), past and present.

How­ev­er, be­yond the rhetoric from both sides, it is a fact that pub­lic con­fi­dence in the TTPS has been wan­ing for some time now.

In its an­nu­al re­port for 2023 laid in Par­lia­ment last No­vem­ber, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion found that 53 per cent of peo­ple sur­veyed were un­hap­py (36 per cent very dis­sat­is­fied and 17 per cent dis­sat­is­fied) with the TTPS’ per­for­mance. This com­pared to 29 per cent who were hap­py (8.3 per cent very sat­is­fied and 20.8 per cent sat­is­fied). The re­main­ing re­spon­dents - rough­ly 18 per cent—were ei­ther neu­tral or gave no re­sponse.

To make mat­ters worse, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) re­leased its re­port on do­mes­tic vi­o­lence last Oc­to­ber, de­tail­ing trou­bling in­stances where com­plaints were not prop­er­ly tak­en and/or not act­ed up­on by the po­lice.

Fast for­ward to Jan­u­ary 2025, with T&T cur­rent­ly un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE), which has some­what sti­fled the num­ber of mur­ders this month, com­pared to what we usu­al­ly see. As of yes­ter­day, there were 14 mur­ders com­pared to 25 for the same pe­ri­od in 2024. Even un­der an SoE, though, that fig­ure is still very much cause for con­cern and shows the plas­ter of the SoE is bare­ly hold­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment back from com­mit­ting crimes.

It begs the ques­tion of whether T&T will re­turn to the same lev­el of ram­pant mur­ders that have dom­i­nat­ed head­lines for more than a decade when the SoE comes to an end.

In­deed, de­spite small gains, there is lit­tle to sug­gest the SoE is pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens any more than be­fore De­cem­ber 30, 2024, when it was an­nounced.

While a cur­few has been called for in some sec­tors, the man­ner of killings wit­nessed un­der this SoE shows that what­ev­er strat­e­gy the TTPS is us­ing is of lit­tle ef­fect.

TTPS of­fi­cials and those in au­thor­i­ty who say oth­er­wise are in­sult­ing a na­tion that is fear­ful on one hand of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, and un­cer­tain on the oth­er as to the ef­fec­tive­ness of the coun­try’s main law en­force­ment agency.

The TTPS heads, there­fore, must them­selves seek in­tro­spec­tion. The SoE, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, was brought about by the threat of crim­i­nal gangs to pub­lic safe­ty. Yet, when TTPS of­fi­cials were asked at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing how many gang mem­bers had been held over the last two weeks, they could give no de­fin­i­tive fig­ure. ACP Richard Smith on­ly sug­gest­ed that gang mem­bers were now mi­grat­ing to dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try to hide from cap­ture.

The na­tion can­not stay un­der an SoE for­ev­er and the TTPS needs a sol­id plan to haul in gang mem­bers who are bent on mak­ing this coun­try seem like a liv­ing hell. Fail­ing that, this year will again be stained with the blood of hun­dreds of peo­ple.

There is al­so no doubt that sys­temic changes are need­ed with­in the TTPS to weed out rogue cops to en­sure any gains made via the SoE are not erod­ed.

When all is said and done, how­ev­er, the can­cer of crime needs to be cured so the T&T can re­turn to a lev­el of peace and sta­bil­i­ty.