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Hope
springs eternal in Martin Joseph’s chest
In
a week when the murder count climbed to higher heights,
and the capital city gained the image of a killing field,
the National Security Minister offered yet another defence
of his stewardship.
Mr Joseph took the bait of Opposition MP Ramesh Lawrence
Maharaj’s call for his resignation. In response, the
minister repeated all the familiar excuses and explanations
and pleas for patience.
In the end, public observers of this exchange could award
the minister marks for effort without, however, identifying
commensurate achievement.
Still, Mr Joseph will not voluntarily quit. By now this
much is clear. Clearly, too, he is unlikely to be removed.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning might be hard-pressed to
find, from those available to him, anyone predictably capable
of doing a better job.
At a minimum, the job requires the holder to show such a
command of what is involved as to inspire public confidence
that he knows what he is doing.
Mr Joseph has mastered some talking points which he keeps
delivering, as if in expectation that repetition will induce
credibility. In reply to Mr Maharaj, for example, he said:
“This
government is committed to reducing the level of crime,
and we are confident we will achieve our objective.”
Restating the Government’s “commitment” and
its “confidence” emphasises how much the Government
has relied on rhetoric, reassurances—and promises—in
lieu of being able to point to evidence of the effectiveness
of its policies and actions.
Mr Joseph cites declines in crime figures in those areas
served by the model police stations. Such declines even
if sustainable, are easily overshadowed by the more critical
fact of the sensational increase in (mostly unsolved) murders.
The minister had acknowledged the increase in murders, attributing
them to gang violence. He said “a specific strategy
to deal with gang violence,” had been developed, jointly
by the Repeat Offenders Programme, the Homicide Prevention
Working Group, and the Crime and Problem Analysis Unit.
Manifestly, the strategy is yet to bear fruit. In Port-of-Spain,
scene of 21 murders since January, Gregory Aboud, president
of the Downtown Owners and Managers’ Association, expressed
horror at “the boldfacedness with which murders are
being committed in broad daylight” on city streets.
Mayor Murchison Brown himself characterised murders in his
city as an “epidemic.” Like the minister, he is
satisfied “that the police are working,” even
if such work has shown no sign of containing the murder
“epidemic.”
Mr Joseph recognises a responsibility to provide resources
to make the police work more effectively.
On this question, however, he is most vulnerable to the
charge of having fallen down on the job.
It’s on his watch that the numerical strength of the
Police Service has fallen by 25 per cent. This has occurred
at a time of runaway crime, when the demands on the police
have been highest.
In response to the shortage of officers, the authorities
have scrambled to recall officers on leave and to cancel
planned leave.
This is, at best, a short-term measure which carries the
potential of depressing morale and reducing effectiveness
through overwork.
Last weekend, the minister attended the “passing out”
of 77 recruits, and announced an intake of 200 in September.
These will represent no net gain in police human resources.
Annually, according to informed sources, the Police Service
loses more than 250 officers through the normal attrition
of retirements and resignations.
All too familiar police invisibility and failure to respond,
because of staff shortages, can only be expected to continue.
One likely consequence is already apparent in the deployment
of the Special Anti-Crime Unit in a raid on a Port-of-Spain
nightclub.
That highly-trained and expensively-equipped Sautt agents
are pressed into service for such a low-level police operation
looks like a clear misapplication of resources.
It's a measure of the crisis of law enforcement, in response
to which Mr Joseph has contributed more rhetoric and promises
than anything else.
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