However, I am pressed to further examine rarely mentioned issues that to me appear equal to or at times even more important than the issues of the under strength police service by 1300, a 12% detection rate probably only higher than Haiti within the western hemisphere, the strategy of the commissioner of police deployment of his said officers, the overpaid mega equipped and underperforming agency of the Special Anti Crime Unit of Trinidad & Tobago and an almost cosmetic air/coast guard as guns drugs and illegal immigrants seem to just be able to row into our shores on a canoe. The icing on the cake however is an Attorney General who has just received a majority Who are really the ones to blame? no confidence vote by the Law association of Trinidad & Tobago.

Who are really the ones to blame? As far as I am concerned, it is time that parliamentarians and senators are held accountable for the state of the country’s affairs. The implementation of crucial pieces of legislation seemed stalled in the myopic view of party politics while innocent people are dying daily. Why haven’t legislation been passed allowing information from phone calls, texting, and e-mails to be used in evidence in court?

Why after havening spent millions on the Caribbean Court of Justice it is still not our final court, while the building sits right here in Trinidad and these judges are being paid quite handsomely in U.S dollars, only to sit on very few cases from Guyana and Barbados? In the mean while the appeal process for the very few caught and even fewer convicted murderers dance there way through the legal labyrinth and soon passes the five year time on death row without facing the hang man’s noose, and are automatically given a reprieve and have had their sentences commuted to life. This entire system makes mockery of the criminal justice process, and it seems quite clear that Parliamentarians are the ones to blame. Is it that because they live safely in their well fortified and gated communities that they have lost feeling for the vulnerable?

We are no longer interested in press releases, and public relations statements. It’s no longer amusing hearing it takes over 300 police officers including the commissioner himself and his deputy 9 hours to arrest 49 people, retrieve 6 firearms and a small quantity of narcotics in a very small part the capital city. We are not interested in police on bicycles, roller blades or skateboards.

If a prisoner can make a call from his cell phone and conducts business as usual, including ordering the execution of whosoever he wishes, something is drastically wrong. To those who sit in the chambers of Governance, remember you are accountable to the electorate, and you have all been found wanting.