The Downtown Owners and Merchants Association (Doma) wants Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to make divisional commanders account for the crimes in their district.
In a statement yesterday, the association called on Rowley to initiate that level of accountancy in the Police Service, saying such a model of management is absent from the management structure of the public services with deadly consequences in security, with the lone exception being the T&T Defence Force.
Noting the latest murder of nine-year-old Cyon Paul and those of other children in the past, Doma said: “The unresolved murders are dividing us, isolating the poorer communities, ascribing value to some lives and asking us to devalue the lives of others./
“The lack of concern for these so-called lesser lives will inevitably invade our thinking in other areas of national life and eventually destroy our social fabric. It will stain further, our reputation and make us a basket-case destination for local and foreign investment.”
It added: “We wish to respectfully suggest that the Prime Minister take charge at once of the effort to save the lives of those whom the society is being asked to devalue.
“In our view, the Prime Minister should give the signal that our nation is determined to save these lives regardless of whether they are ‘known to us’ or ‘gang or drug-related’ and that these lives matter.”
Doma said it believed that forcing divisional commanders to give an account, perhaps on a weekly basis, would obligate the heads to ask the same of the ranks below them, who will in turn filter the questions down through the ranks, from senior superintendents to the constables, who are most publicly visible to the people.
“Who better to start this desperately needed line-management model but the person with the highest rank, the chairman of the National Security Council, our commander in chief, the Prime Minister of T&T,” Doma said.
It noted that several months ago, Rowley had stated that “the divisional commanders of the Police Service have to answer for the crime in their district and to them the country must turn for the answers they are looking for about all the killing that is taking place.”
Doma thus called on Rowley to “follow through on his astute remarks with the action that our country needs.”
Doma also suggested that a weekly meeting of divisional commanders, including the Minister of National Security, Commissioner of Police, DCPs and relevant ACPs, be convened at the Prime Minister’s office with the haste that the task of saving lives required.
“Take one district, one county, one neighbourhood and solve one murder, make one arrest and get us back on the road to hope. The power of the accountability model for divisional commanders will lead us to hold the murderers themselves accountable,” it said.
“We must demand that the ‘killers walking among us’ answer for their savagery to the ranks above them, initially to the detectives and the constables in the charge room, then to the DPP and finally to a magistrate or judge,” Doma added.