“OPERATION PURSUIT”

Last week TCI recorded its third gun-related murder in the last 10 days, which brings the murder toll to seven for 2023.

Commissioner of Police Trevor Botting said the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force aims to take control of the situation. He stressed that the recently established multi-agency 'Operation Pursuit' will work aggressively to curb the surge in murders and the organised crime of smuggling people, guns, and drugs. “The focus of Operation Pursuit will be on serious crime and chasing down those responsible for the shootings and murder. We are deploying every available tactic, some of it very overt on the streets and some of it covert, in the shadows, to identify those responsible for the crimes", the Commissioner said. What are your thoughts?

Use what works

Time will tell whether "Operation Pursuit" works. If it doesn't, I say bring back the Bahamian police officers and offer one of them the COP job!

We should not have to do it alone

Indeed Mr Commissioner, "The focus of Operation Pursuit will be on serious crime and chasing down those responsible for the shootings and murder. We are deploying every available tactic, some of it very overt on the streets and some of it covert, in the shadows, to identify those responsible for the crimes", however, Mr Commissionershould you not primarily be telling HMG to live up fully to the obligation of full and proper and effective TCI border protection and control? But, hell, that costs moneyright?

More action, less talking

Let's hope that "multi-agency" doesn't lead to "multi-bureaucratic", endless committee meetings with dozens of long reports. That is an easy trap to fall into. What is needed is "action this day". ‘A tale of two cities'

The TCI is witnessing stark and “in your face” economic realities. Two countries are created, and many nationalities and social groupings all gather to create a new utopia, not for the Turks & Caicos Islander or His Caribbean Brother and Sister (the "Locals"). Millionaires and possibly billionaires are being created but the locals are routinely left out. Inevitably these disparities lead to bad results. Since the interim government, for some reason or the other, the expatriate community demanded ‘protection’. There is an experiment to revert to Non-Turks & Caicos Islander Police Commissioners. Men from Canada and the UK were deployed to protect the National asset and of course, more directly, the "Grace Bay Community”.

Very little if any, crime-fighting efforts are placed on the inner Turks & Caicos Community. Cameras, officers and personnel are deployed to the affluent areas. This leaves Five Cays, Blue Hills and the Bight open, vulnerable and ready to be plundered by robbers and killers. It is the kind of paradigm that one would only have seen in pre-Nelson Mandela South Africa where economic and social apartheid along with harsh repression were all the order of the day. TCI people comment daily on social media and among themselves about these differing and nuanced economic and social issues, huge economic gaps and the apparent latter-day racism; “how we don’t have no country no more” and how "our country has been taken away from us".

It is easy to paint the tale of two cities and it is more apparent where an elected Government is spending so much money but there is little in the way of representing the People. There is a complete lack of leadership and hope. So the listless youth, without fathers, mothers or a viable future resort to crime. The resources of the police force are being added to, but it seems that the focus is not on the crime-prone areas but on the utopia areas, quite naturally, the result will be continued crime, killings and murders.

The crime in the TCI, a small and usually safe place to live seems to continue unabated and the government and Commissioner of Police seem clueless about what to do about it all.

With elected officials seeking to claim praise for successes, they are really silent on these issues of crime and national security. Ministers of this government sit on the National Security Council, but the public nor the crime situation, are in any way feeling their presence.

The Premier has dogged support for the Commissioner of Police and that is not helping. As an elected government; the ones budgeting for police, crimes, national security affairs, elected officials should be demanding answers and results. Are they silent and comfortable because they live in protected areas and are unaffected by crime and the current spate of murders?

Are they also buying the Police Commissioner's promises to tackle the ongoing and never-ending crime wave? They are not doing what they can and they are not “out there representing the people” on these issues. They are not demanding more budgeting or more police presence in crime-ridded areas.

They all seem content with the status quo, the Premier's blind support of the weak crime-fighting tactics of the Commissioner and it is business as usual. Elected MPS –those "14 Magnificent PNP MPS" should be blasting, crying out and demanding justice but they are not. Silent as lambs.

Will they wait till they are in opposition to find their voices on these and other issues that affect the people? It is likely that after they are kicked out is when they will find the intestinal fortitude to tackle serious issues. This murder trend is one of those many serious issues and they should speak now.

One murder is too much

To take an optimistic look at the situation one may surmise that the trends are moving lower but any death is too much, which reflects on the competence or lack thereof of the Police Commissioner. The situation is not under control!

The idea that in a small ordinarily peaceloving place like the TCI, murders often occur is unsettling. No amount of spin doctoring or fancy political talk can help that situation.

The outlook for the future is not good. An entire generation of youth -lost. There has to be a greater focus on saving and rescuing young men so that they would end up angry and frustrated. Too many of these men grow up without fathers and do not know who they are. With proper parenting, the young man would be able to decide on a career early. Work towards that and stay off the streets.

The Ministry of Social Services needs to exercise more leadership in this area. With the right budgeting and policy, a lot of these “lost generation” issues could be addressed. Maybe the police and the government are trying to do it alone.

They need to involve the official opposition, PDM and the general public in a wider policy forum to detail, find solutions, create a consensus and prevent crime. Enough is not being done. So, the murders and the killings continue.

Hapless approach

This “Operation Pursuit will be on serious crime and chasing down those responsible for the shootings and murder. We are deploying every available tactic, some of it very overt on the streets and some of it covert, in the shadows, to identify those responsible for the crimes", uttered by the Commissioner of Police, is the same old strategy and it is not working. Any other Commissioner of Police would have resigned. At least this happens in a real democracy, where when a policy fails, the person “responsible” for a failed policy, takes responsibility, “falls on his sword” and resigns.

Using that yardstick and the hapless approach this government has taken to crime, they should all go and resign. Alas, there are no latter-day, Biblical “Jonathan and Sauls” left around. What the government needs to be doing is working with the community, and opposition alike to find short-term and long-term solutions to the issue. With crime, robberies murders in the TCI still abundant, something needs to be done and this current high command are really not up to the job.

Supplement with social projects

To tackle the generational crime wave; there needs to be a policy, backed by proper budgeting, which is sorely lacking to deal with the youth of the TCI and their "vital futures".

When they are idle, with proper parenting or not, they should be placed to work after school. In the old days, young men went to “trade”, i.e. the old apprenticeship schemes. In large measure, the trade model was backed by legislation where young men went to work under a carpenter, electrician,