#BTEditorial – States of emergency

Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has drawn national and regional attention by declaring that he is pondering whether it was time to declare crime a public health emergency in the two-island republic.

This after a bloody weekend of nine murders and four fatal police shootings.

Dr Rowley said: “Every single day there is a spate of violent crime largely driven by, but not only driven by firearms, and defying logic … It is something we are going to focus on more.

“I think in Trinidad and Tobago the time has come for us to declare violence as a public health emergency and we need to find solutions to treating with violence in our population.”

While we would certainly want to hear from Dr Rowley what such a declaration would entail and how he feels it would be effective in arresting the crime scourge, it certainly underlines the seriousness of the situation and the urgent need to find solutions. It may also expose yet another political leader apparently out of ideas for solutions beyond reaction.

Nonetheless to declare violent crime a public health emergency after decades of declaring states of emergency solely for national security reasons warrants more than passing comment.

Research has shown that jurisdictions that have declared crime a public health emergency have moved beyond strict laws and tough penalties from the justice system to a wider approach that tackles the root of the scourge, addresses systemic issues, and devises holistic solutions to fix known factors that increase the likelihood of violence. 

Here at home, the recent surge in gun violence has brought our own crisis – and our current paralysis in responding to it – to the fore.

Last Wednesday’s double murder in St Joseph, the shooting death of one and the wounding of three at Blackwood Screw Dock in Cavans Lane, The City, and the shooting at Cave Hill, St Michael are jarring for an island still largely considered a relatively safe place to live, work and play.

But that image is being overshadowed by increasingly brazen criminal elements and rising firepower.

The impact is not only devastating for victims and their families, but more and more affected communities are forced to deal with the physical and emotional trauma of the senseless violence.

Citizens have openly declared their fear about the prevailing gun crime as they plead for authorities to do more to stem the tide of violence.

We can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand or offer the usual political rhetoric to quell concerns about the crime scourge when our lives, our stability and our safety are at risk.

In a Government interview released by the Public Affairs Department on Sunday, Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce told the island what we already knew: 13 murders for the first half of the year, compared to 11 murders for the same period in 2021.

The Commissioner expressed concern that firearms were used in 61 per cent of this year’s homicide.

He said to the interviewer: “I understand the concerns of the citizens and that is why we continue to go over with our members to go back to those areas where crimes are occurring, talk to persons, reassure persons, where there is that level of fear or where harm is anticipated we do that reassurance policing to let persons know things are not as bad as you think it is.”

But the people cannot merely be told that things are “not as bad”. We cannot be ordered to retain confidence in the efforts of the Barbados Police Service to arrest crime and lawlessness.

While we may not reach the emergency status of Trinidad and Tobago – population 1.3 million – the level of violence in Barbados is grossly out of proportion to an island a quarter of our southern neighbour’s population. We have reached a point where violent crime is an issue of more than citizen security but of public health, social cohesion and economic growth.

We have a problem that requires a holistic, all-of-government, multi-dimensional approach. It begins with an acknowledgement of its roots in gnawing inequality and the will to change the direction of our country. Violent crime is a deep problem. But more than that it is the symptom of an even deeper malaise.

What, then, is the crisis that we will declare?