By Clint Chan Tack
May 15, 2023 – Newsday
FORMER commissioner of police (CoP) Gary Griffith on Sunday slammed CoP Erla Harewood-Christopher for her claim that 100 legal guns have been used in crimes.
Harewood-Christopher made the claim in a sworn statement filed in the High Court two weeks ago, in response to a lawsuit of gun dealer Towfeek Ali who is seeking permission to import ammunition.
Continue reading Former commissioner rubbishes top cop’s gun stats: Not so fast, Erla
By Raffique Shah
April 23, 2023
In warfare, any kind of warfare, whatever the size, strengths and weaknesses between and among the combatants, what any general will enjoy fighting against, is an enemy divided. In World War II for example, the Allied Forces comprised most of Europe except, of course, Germany and Italy on one front, Japan on another and remnants of the Ottoman Empire on a third. Among themselves the impressive Allied leadership— Generals such as Montegomery, Eisenhower, Wavell among a phalanx of highly experienced and well respected, one might say tactical geniuses, had to cope with the egos of Charles De Galle and Winston Churchill, both of whom were themselves military geniuses.
Continue reading Anarchy order of the day
By Raffique Shah
April 16, 2023
The criminal underworld has expanded and intensified its war against mostly law-abiding citizens by mounting brazen attacks against selected targets in open thoroughfares, damn the innocent victims who are seen as collateral damage. They have expanded ‘home invasions’ to the extent they now dominate the news.
Continue reading Three Patriotic Tinis
By Raffique Shah
April 10, 2023
I believe it was the night before Holy Thursday, listening to news on radio or television, I paid attention up to when the announcer counted past seven murders. They might have been over a period longer than 24 hours. They might even have been less than the full day’s score. What did it matter? I asked myself—and continued doing whatever I was doing.
Continue reading Has God Forsaken Us?
By Raffique Shah
March 13, 2023
Surely, we deserved better than that, Leila sighed audibly as she aside the device on which she had been reading a news report. I thought I knew what report it was, but I felt in the baiting mood, so I asked ‘What are you upset over? Who deserved better?’
‘I’m talking about the twenty year old corruption matter involving the state vs Basdeo Panday and others. The state under which heading the DPP must fall, withdrew one of the corruption matters yesterday.’
Continue reading Wuss dan dat
By Raffique Shah
January 23, 2023
Will the Prime Minister tell the nation what he expects to achieve by staging a national consultation on crime, which he announced recently? When he made the headline-grabbing proposal, which seemed to me an outburst triggered by extreme frustration, Dr Keith Rowley came across as a leader who had nothing more to offer the population on the one issue that impacts their lives daily, although statistics might well reveal that in reality, fewer that ten percent of them have come face-to-face with violent crimes, and far fewer have been victims.
Continue reading Talk Done
By Raffique Shah
November 21, 2022
Acting Commissioner of Police McDonald Jacob has been in the Service for too many years, and served at the executive level for far too long to fall for the trick of announcing yet another anti-crime initiative in a bid to halt the near hysteria emanating from the population over the five-to-ten murders a day. He is experienced enough to know that nothing short of a significant drop in the murder rate will ease the burden of his minister breathing down his neck, the opposition politicians lampooning him and deep frustration among his subordinate officers making his life very uncomfortable.
Continue reading A Radical Thought on Crime
By Raffique Shah
November 07, 2022
Not surprisingly, the murder rate in this country, as it soars past anything we have ever experienced, is seen as the number one issue impacting the populace, the electorate, based partly on people’s genuine fear of having to face unimaginable violence, maybe death, riding not a pale horse, but actually some stolen Nissan Sunny, its occupants armed with heavy fire power, ready to rob or kill some law-abiding citizen who worked hard for the few dollars he or she has.
Continue reading Armed for war
By Raffique Shah
September 26, 2022
One of these not-so-good days, when the good citizens in this nation have had it up to their throats with the thugs who are turning this once-peaceful country into the killing fields of the Caribbean, if not the murder and mayhem capital of the world, they will rise up like the mythical crimson tide with a fury they didn’t think they possessed, to reclaim the slice of paradise they once owned and enjoyed from the mindless criminals who have made Trinidad and Tobago a living hell, something the population will never accept as the norm.
Continue reading Only two choices
By Raffique Shah
July 04, 2022
We are not the most crime-ridden country in the world, notwithstanding claims to that effect by organisations and individuals that manipulate raw data from dubious sources so that they can support whatever theory or argument their authors wish to pursue.
For example, there are academics and criminologists who rely on official police numbers that could be quite misleading. To support my argument, I ask: can the police or other government agency in many densely-populated, slum-infested countries and cities (think India, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines…) accurately account for every living or dead soul in such human-jungles? Hell, in the comparatively minuscule Beetham Estate or Sea Lots in Trinidad and Tobago, people live and die and never appear on records, so wheel and come back if you expect me to buy “official” data as being accurate.
Continue reading Power of the gun