PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad– Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries will meet in Barbados to discuss the crime situation in the region, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley said Monday as his administration warned that the “dramatic escalation in violent crime” is now at a crisis-level here.
Rowley told a news conference following a weekend retreat of his Cabinet that the “plethora of violent and unacceptable conduct” had been observed throughout the country in recent times and that the government would move ahead with its intentions to address the issue of violence and crime from a public health perspective.
He told reporters that the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) was convinced that increased criminal conduct involving criminals having access to firearms and their ability to pose a threat to the population as a result of “shortcoming on the part of the state
“We have had inordinate levels of crimes and in the most recent times and the brazenness, bold-facades, and impunity with which criminal elements are operating largely with the use of firearms and through the organizations of gangs and hired killers in our community….”
He told reporters that he was nonetheless confident that he had confidence in the TTPS, the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force, and the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) developing the appropriate strategies to deal with the crime situation here.
More than 300 people have been murdered so far this year.
Rowley recalled having said recently that concerning breaking the cycle and stilling the flow of recruits into the criminal element and the flush of criminal behavior from young people that the government’s intention to declare violent crimes a public health issue because violence across the society is now the norm.
He said the criminal behavior ranged from domestic violence, violence in schools, violence person against person, armed responses for everything and gains to be had by criminal conduct, lives to be lost, and property to be stolen.
He said a committee has been formed, tasked with defining the issue in a public context and developing a plan of action.
Rowley said such a plan would directly address the population’s youth through education and decrease access and desensitization to crime within communities.
“The intention is to have in the context of this issue we raise in this way that we develop a national plan of action, and a public health approach would drive that plan of action -that approach would involve the definition of the problem.
“I have acknowledged a problem, and we will define it if there is one. We will identify the causes and the risk factors; we will design response and test the interventions we will make; we will implement and scale up the effective interventions and support continuous evaluation.”
“The objective is to enter the youth population at various levels and begin a line of education which should steer people away from participation or be desensitized by crime to criminal activity. We believe if we do that effectively, we will begin to generate a wave of people who will reject crime or be in a position to respond to it from the personal through the home through the school,” he said.
Rowley said that the committee would be co-chaired by the permanent secretaries of the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services and the Ministry of Health, overseen by the Office of the Prime Minister, and would involve the participation of the Ministry of National Security, the Police Service, the Ministry of Sport and Community Development, the Ministry of Education, and the Tobago House of Assemblies.
The prime minister told reporters that the issue of crime as a public health concern was not “brand-new” and that the operation was responding to a “crisis.”
He said crime under this context was on the agenda of CARICOM and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), with regional countries meeting in Barbados, where resources would be pooled to discuss the issue further.
Rowley also dismissed media reports that he had summoned Acting Police Commissioner McDonald Jacob to attend the weekend retreat to discuss the crime situation here. As head of the National Security Council, he met with the National Security Minister away from the retreat.
“I wanted to meet with the Police and the Defense Force; I took time out from the retreat, and I went with the National Security Minister and other elements of National Security, and I met with them in a separate place, in a separate room in my capacity as chairman for the national council, and we discussed the security agencies responded to what was happened,” he said.
“Certain decisions were made, much of which I cannot disclose with you in public but except to say to you that I am satisfied that the police service and the defense force and the SSA which are all the team that is focusing on what is happening with us there are some actions to take place, actions taking place and we will continue so to do…
The police service present in the meeting by the Commissioner of Police presented on what they were doing and what will be done, the Chief of Defense Staff who has his men and women on standby for further action.” Rowley said.
and then 
