00:00Criminologist Dr. Randy Seepersad tells the Morning Edition the state has not failed in its response to crime,
00:07noting that significant work is being done in collaboration with key stakeholders to contain criminal activity.
00:15And when we look at the kinds of engagements that the Ministry of Homeland Security are having with parents,
00:23teachers' associations, with schools, with communities, with the Children's Authority, with the Ministry of Education,
00:30with the University of the West Indies and many other stakeholders, he realized that there is a lot happening.
00:37So indeed, these are exciting times and I will not at all say that the government has failed.
00:43I think they are going actually very, very well.
00:45He adds that while the state of emergency has played a role in supporting law enforcement operations,
00:52it raises an important question about long-term strategy once measures are lifted.
00:58As soon as you lift your boot, so to speak, if you want to use that analogy, you know, from
01:05the crime situation,
01:07and by that I mean as soon as you lift the state of emergency, things will tend to go right
01:12back to normal.
01:13Dr. Seepersad also warns against linking criminal behavior to specific communities or ethnic groups.
01:21When we look at the crime statistics and we map the crime statistics,
01:25we will see that crime happens all over Trinidad and Tobago,
01:30regardless of constituency, regardless of political affiliation.
01:36It is also true that crime is concentrated in certain hotspot areas.
01:42But again, it has nothing to do with ethnicity.
01:45And this is something that international research bears out.
01:49He warns that failure to address both dimensions together could have serious long-term consequences for national stability.
01:58We are heading to a point where we will pass Jamaica and we will pass Haiti.
02:02We will have what we call state capture, where we have criminal elements starting to run.
02:09Indeed, this has started, but starting to run larger and larger parts of our country.
02:15We don't want that to happen.
02:16Nicole M. Romany, TV6 News.
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