On Tues­day, T&T achieved the dis­mal mile­stone of re­port­ing 500 mur­ders in 288 days, which puts this coun­try on track to go past 2022, when 605 peo­ple were killed by il­le­gal means.

The mile­stone pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for se­ri­ous re­flec­tion on the coun­try’s con­tin­ued scourge of mur­der and whether the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing enough to ad­dress these cap­i­tal crimes.

Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, with mur­ders ap­proach­ing two a day, it is clear that the mea­sures the Gov­ern­ment has put in place are not work­ing. The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fail­ure to im­ple­ment any ma­jor ini­tia­tive aimed at slow­ing down or stop­ping mur­ders may lead to the per­cep­tion that there are Cab­i­net min­is­ters who be­lieve il­le­gal killings will de­cline of their own ac­cord.

This is quite un­like­ly. With every mur­der that goes un­de­tect­ed and un­pun­ished, there are mur­der­ers-in-wait­ing who are be­com­ing more and more em­bold­ened to com­mit their own heinous acts.

Ex­pres­sions of pain at the lat­est gris­ly mur­der notwith­stand­ing, the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­par­ent hands-off ap­proach to vi­o­lent crime has led to a grow­ing fear that mur­ders are now be­ing com­mit­ted with im­puni­ty. Vic­tims are be­ing gunned down in broad day­light with mur­der­ers trot­ting away, as though they per­ceive there is on­ly a one in ten chance that they will be ap­pre­hend­ed by the po­lice. That per­cep­tion is based on the re­al­i­ty of the very low de­tec­tion rate for homi­cides in T&T.

While en­sur­ing that there are se­ri­ous con­se­quences to mur­der will re­quire a com­plete over­haul of the po­lice, ju­di­cial and pris­ons sys­tems, there is a re­cent crime trend that de­mands the ur­gent at­ten­tion of the law en­force­ment com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

In the last three weeks, there have been three in­stances of men be­ing kid­napped by peo­ple wear­ing po­lice cloth­ing and dri­ving of­fi­cial po­lice ve­hi­cles and oth­ers with flash­ing blue lights.

Thir­ty-two year old Fe­lic­i­ty busi­ness­man Sachel Kunge­be­har­ry was kid­napped on Sep­tem­ber 25 by three men who, on­look­ers said, were dressed in po­lice op­er­a­tional gear. On Oc­to­ber 12, five men, who were said to be dressed in po­lice tac­ti­cal wear, en­tered a bar in Cunu­pia in the ear­ly evening and kid­napped a 33-year-old War­renville busi­ness­man. On Mon­day, a Moru­ga busi­ness­man was kid­napped and robbed by men who on­look­ers claimed were dressed in po­lice at­tire and cam­ou­flage.

It is nec­es­sary to lim­it com­ment on these mat­ters be­cause in the first in­stance, two po­lice of­fi­cers have been charged with mur­der. Those of­fi­cers are, of course, pre­sumed to be in­no­cent un­til they are proven oth­er­wise. The sec­ond and third mat­ters are, as yet, un­re­solved.

But the fact that it is be­ing al­leged that kid­nap­pings are be­ing per­pe­trat­ed by peo­ple dressed in po­lice uni­forms is like­ly to fur­ther re­duce the trust the pop­u­la­tion has in the po­lice ser­vice.

How is a home­own­er whose door has been kicked in by men claim­ing to be po­lice of­fi­cers to know whether these are gen­uine law en­forcers or men wear­ing bor­rowed, pur­chased or stolen uni­forms?

This is an is­sue that re­quires the im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Kei­th Scot­land, who was ap­point­ed in Ju­ly by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to fo­cus es­pe­cial­ly on polic­ing is­sues and the re­spon­sive­ness of the law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

The like­li­hood that some crim­i­nals have ac­cess to po­lice uni­forms is ex­treme­ly trou­bling and re­quires a thor­ough over­haul and au­dit of all uni­forms is­sued to all of­fi­cers.