Attorney General Anand Ramlogan said the current crime situation requires a mixture of professionalism and “friendly policing” with “a rough and strong approach to deal with some of the little terrorists masquerading as bandits who are terrorising the society and holding us to siege.”
Ramlogan, who wore shades after having eye surgery to remove a small cyst from his eye, said so while speaking with reporters after the distribution of 75 instruments of appointment to marriage officers at Cabildo Chambers, St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday. When asked about the country’s crime rate and comments made about it he said:
“I think the statistics would show there is a decrease in serious crime but if you have one horrendous murder on the front page that has a lasting indelible impressions that would easily overwhelm whatever statistics you produce. “That does not mean you can disregard the statistics but it does not mean you would be triumphant about the statistics because one murder is one too many.”
Ramlogan described the Government’s approach to the decreased crime rate as “cautiously optimistic” and added it could not be hidden that there had been a decrease in serious crime. He said the Government, however, was still not satisfied. “The murder rate still remains unacceptably high for a small country like T&T and that is why we are putting in place measures to try and arrest the problem,” he added.
He said there had a significant decrease in the last months but there had been a spike in the last few days which he described as unfortunate. Saying the Government is trying its best, Ramlogan said several initiatives were being implemented, such as the as the “jammers and grabbers” to block cellphone calls in prisons as announced by PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar, “so that the gang leaders and bandits cannot call hits from the inside.”
Other initiatives, he said, included a CCTV package, rapid response unit for the police service. He added: “We believe we can get this beast and monster under control but it also requires the support of each and every citizen. “You cannot have police officers on every doorstep, in front of everyone’s gate and you cannot have situations where people will harbor and hide the criminals in their communities and then complain when bad things happen to them in their communities.
“In some cases, the gangs have infiltrated and penetrated the communities to such an extent that the communities have become a virtual victim and alter-ego of the gangs themselves and we need to be very careful about that when the communities secrete the gang leaders and criminals within the bosom of the communities, sometimes out of fear, sometimes because they fell they have no choice,” he said.
Ramlogan said there should also be a certain level of social responsibility on the part of the media in how it acted and responded to some of the people who protested and demonstrated.