The Manicou Report

There are three things that worried me this week when it comes to the crime situation in Trinidad and Tobago. If you are anything like me it’s very difficult to be bothered by the incidents covered in the news anymore. Call it being desensitized if you will, but grizzly murders don’t shock me anymore. Surprisingly, it wasn’t even Tecia Henry’s murder that bothered me so much, heinous as it was.

The first thing was the statement made by Patrick Manning at the PNM convention following Tecia Henry’s murder saying of the murder, “I know all of you all know the facts. Ent you know? Don’t take it at face value, that is all I would say”. In the same story Manning expresses his sympathy for President George Maxwell Richards as he noted the difficulty President Richards is experiencing in appointing a new Integrity Commission, yet not one ounce of that sympathy finds its way towards the family of Tecia Henry. A letter to the editor of the Trinidad Express written by a Dr. Steve Smith says it best.:

After witnessing the Prime Minister’s “performance” specifically with respect to the death of Tecia Henry at the hands of some two-legged monster, I find myself not only uncontrollably outraged but truly afflicted by the frustration and helplessness of knowing that this mob ruler cannot be immediately and summarily fired for such monstrous and selfish irresponsibility!

Selfish because in unjustly slandering Tecia’s mother and raising doubts about her credibility, he has simultaneously dealt a mortal blow to our collective social conscience. And we continue to wonder how we have become so heartless and callous a people!

In true PNM style, he throws out a piece of mauvais commérage and mob talk, clearly intended to compromise the reputation of the child’s parents and in so doing, attempts not only to vindicate the child’s abominable murder, but to simultaneously and with an ostentation that truly rivals the sickening display by Pontius Pilate, to wash the blood off his own hands and those of his incompetent and equally culpable Cabinet.

Rather than offer sympathy, the malignant head of this callous organisation in one fell swoop has become judge, jury and executioner!

He has abused his authority and the information asymmetry that his job as Chairman of the National Security Council affords him, and for the sake of his lust for power, has sacrificed the demands of natural justice.

Dr Steve Smith

via e-mail

Nuff said.

The second thing that got to me was Martin Joseph’s disclosure that the evidence rooms of the Trinidad and Tobago police service have become a free-for-all for corrupt members of the TTPS. If they replaced the evidence room door with a revolving door I don’t think they could make the perversion of justice any more efficient. Just look at the grocery list:

• 22 foil packets possibly containing cocaine.
• One 9mm pistol and magazine
• Six Sig Sauer firearms, ammunition
• A 16-gauge shotgun
• An air rifle
• Six bread pans
• One gold Almera vehicle

Something makes me think that this list of missing items is only what they have found to be missing so far. The real list could be much longer. Not only will suspects go free because of missing evidence, but all of these seized items will find their way back on the nations streets.

The final thing that has bothered me, were the details surrounding the murder of Camille Daniel yesterday. For bandits to shoot a woman on the compound of the West End Police Station without any fear or apprehension tells me something. There are people in our country who wouldn’t litter on a lonely street in the middle of the night just because it is the wrong thing to do. And then there are people who would take a gun (sans silencer) and shoot a woman in the back – all on the compound of a police station of all places, and will go home and sleep the sleep of the just.

So when you mix callous politicians, corrupt police and hardened criminals, what do you get? And this is the reason why I’m worried. It seems as if we are in some deep trouble here. I think we’d better settle down and get comfortable because this has “long haul” written all over it. The way things are going now, things will get a lot worse before they get better.