Tag Archives: Crime in T&T

Crime in T&T, General T&T, Law, Media, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity

The Road Make to Walk…

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 06, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeLast Sunday, four of the five Sunday columnists of this newspaper wrote about the crime problem that confronts the nation. The Sunday Guardian also published a long investigative piece on the subject. On Monday, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon talked about the pervasiveness of crime and concluded that ours is “a culture of disrespect.” At a fundamental level, it is more an economic-philosophical than a moral question. Left unattended and incorrectly analyzed, it will lead to greater degeneracy.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T

We are all in this Together

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 30, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeWith things getting hotter and deadlier, one recognizes how far our society has gone out of joint. With criminals finding more ingenious ways to avenge their grievances—like taking a boat from Sea Lots to catch their targets unaware in Las Cuevas—one wonders if the government and/or civic organizations are as ingenious as the criminals in getting the society back on an even keel.
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Crime in T&T, Drug Trade, General T&T, Police, Violence

Crime and punishment T&T style

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By Raffique Shah
July 25, 2019

Raffique ShahOozing from the barrels of blood that flowed from the bullet-ridden corpses of last week’s 24 murder victims and almost as many who suffered serious to critical gunshot wounds were several important lessons that we may choose to ignore, to our peril. Violent crimes have spiralled out of control, and most people are inured to the blood and gore that once shocked us. Now, spectators calmly record the macabre murders on their smart-phone cameras, video-clips to be uploaded on the Intrernet. Some achieve viral videos ratings, providing entertainment for huge audiences on social media.
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corruption, General T&T, PNM, Politics

Whispers of Corrupting Practices

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 28, 2019

“Whenever you ignore whispers, you do so at your own peril. Sometimes they may be the truth.”

—Eric Williams, PNM’s Founding father

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOk! Minister Colm Imbert, PNM party chairman, did not bouff Education Minister Anthony Garcia. Garcia was asked “a barrage of questions” and Imbert intervened politely, according to Laurel Lezama-Lee Sing, PNM’s public relations officer, “to remind him [Garcia] that the press conference was about party issues” (Express, May 20).
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Law, Murder, PNM, Politics, Violence

Cultural & Environmental Violence

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 20, 2019

“I bear a grudge that we in Trinidad do not pay enough attention to our heroes. They are the people that will give Trinidad life.”

—Beryl McBurnie quoted in Judy Raymond, Beryl McBurnie

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThere has been much coverage about the horrible murder of the prime minister’s boyhood friend John Miles and his wife Eulyn at the hands of a monstrously deranged person. This dastardly act led the PM to bemoan: “What have we become? What are we producing as ‘the next generation’? John and I grew up together in poverty, with pride, but violence and criminality were never part of our life” (Express, May 4).
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Court, Crime in T&T, Drug Trade, General T&T, Police

Jamming the Poor, Still

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 13, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn 1981, after teaching in the United States for about ten years, I decided to return home for good. To do so I had to erect a personal library so I could do my work. Without my library I would be lost, so I asked my first cousin—one of those cousins who possesses the skills to do everything—to build a library at the back of my mother’s house.
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corruption, Court, Crime in T&T, General T&T, Politics, UNC

Alleged corruption hurts UNC again

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…ex MP Collin Partap slams party

By Gail Alexander
May 06, 2019 – guardian.co.tt

Gerald Ramdeen, Anand RamloganCorruption allegations put the People’s Partnership (PP)/United National Congress (UNC) administration out of office in the 2010 general polls and more allegations or corruption-related charges against UNC members could well keep the UNC out of government in the 2020 general election.

It’s not a PNMite saying that. It’s former UNC Cumuto/Manzanilla MP and minister of state, Collin Partap doing so.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, Police

Wage war against criminals, not the media

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By Raffique Shah
April 30, 2019

Raffique ShahGary Griffith’s unilateral declaration of a “cold war” on the conventional media in general, and the CCN Group in particular, was as predictable as it was inevitable. As a garrulous ex-military officer whose larger-than-life public image was literally forged by and in the mass media, he failed to understand that unlike publicists who are paid to promote a product or personality, successful media houses thrive on their fierce independence in disseminating news and views.
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corruption, Crime in T&T, General T&T

Do not politicise war against crime

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By Raffique Shah
February 20, 2019

Raffique ShahBuried in the last paragraph of a document titled “Interim Gang Report 2018”, which was compiled by the Organised Crime and Intelligence Unit of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service and featured prominently in the last Sunday Express, was one of the main reasons why criminal gangs conduct their savagery with impunity, making a mockery of all attempts by new Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith to rein in their murderous rampage.

Said paragraph concludes: “…Extensive co-ordination between the TTPS and the T&T Prisons Service is crucial to expand investigations and gather intelligence to address the growing threat gangs pose to T&T.”
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Education, General T&T, Schools

The Incredible Dream

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 12, 2018

PART 2

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeWhen enslaved Africans (they were the majority population then) won their full freedom in 1838, there was an urgent need to establish an educational system that combined their ways of knowing with the needs of the dominant colonial class. Sir Henry MacLeod, governor of the island, sent the following dispatch to Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State: “I should submit to Your Lordship that there never was a country where some general situation of education was more required than in Trinidad” (May 1, 1840).
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