North American Consultants "Disappearing " Trinidad's (Horrific) Crime Rate?

North American Consultants "Disappearing" Trinidad's (Horrific) Crime Rate?
By Nicholas Stix
07/14/2012
VDARE

South Trinidad, West Indies.— The two-island Republic of Trinidad & Tobago (Trinidad, or “TT” for short) is already the kind of multicultural paradise into which immigration policy is transforming the U.S. Not coincidentally, it seems to be finding it necessary to “disappear” crime in the U.S.-pioneered way.

When TT was a British colony, African slaves brought here to cut sugar cane constituted the majority. But in 1834 the slaves were emancipated and refused to cut cane, no matter how high the wage. So indentured servants (“coolies” in the negative local vernacular) were brought in from India. They earned their freedom after seven years, at which point they received their pay and a modest piece of land.

(Which means they were treated much better than their white counterparts in early colonial America, who were typically worked to death by their white employers.)

As of the 2000 census, Trinidad (pop. 1,226,383, as of July, 2011) consisted of:

• Indian (South Asian) 40%
• African 37.5%
• mixed 20.5% [mostly black/Indians, called “doglas”]
• other 1.2%
• unspecified 0.8% [CIA World Factbook]

The Chinese and whites, very successful albeit small groups in Trinidad, are buried in the “other” and “unspecified” categories.

In TT, unlike in the U.S., you can complain about crime without being branded a racist. Of course, you cannot say in public who is responsible. But in private conversations with Indians, even strangers, there is no mincing of words: It is “Africans,” “Negroes,” and worse (“N——s”), who are responsible for most of the violent crime, although one Indian woman told me: “Some Indians is in it, too.”

Recent murders in TT:

• 2008 550
• 2009 509
• 2010 485
• 2011 354 (includes three-month long state of emergency)
• 2012 212 (as of July 8)

 [Trinidad & Tobago Crime Stats]

Average: 42.3 murders per 100,000 population, 2008-2010.

In contrast, the U.S. average murder rate from 1980-2008: 5 per 100,000 population. [Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 by Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith, Bureau of Justice Statistics/U.S. Department of Justice, November 16, 2011.]

(In 1962, the American rate was 4.6. It peaked at 10.2 per 100,000 in 1980, and then declined to 4.8 homicides per 100,000 in 2010. [Patterns& Trends by Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith, Bureau of Justice Statistics/U.S. Department of Justice, November, 2011.]

Thus from 2008-2010 TT’s murder rate was over eight times higher than that of the U.S. (Due to TT’s three-month state of emergency in 2011, I am not counting that year’s numbers).

Significantly, in both countries, there are uncorroborated claims of murders that are not counted. (Two confirmed cases: in 1996. The NYPD was caught hiding a murder and the fatal police shooting of a car thief).

Recently, Jack Warner, the new black Minister of National Security in TT’s Congress of the People ruling coalition, which is dominated by the Indian United National Congress, demanded that the National Police Service reduce crime:

Speaking directly to Gibbs, Warner said: “With me, you and your men would have quite a friend...anything you can do to reduce crime in this country, Commissioner, I shall be your friend. ‘But I tell you openly that if the crime in this country does not go down, I shall be every policeman’s enemy”...

“We must have a murder-free week, a murder-free fortnight, a murder-free month and then a murder-free year...nothing less is accepted,” he said.

 [Warner to Gibbs and cops: Keep crime down, and be my friend by Geisha Kowlessar, Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, June 30, 2012.]

Dwayne Gibbs is the National Police Service’s white Canadian police commissioner, formerly Chief Superintendent of Police in Alberta. TT had just endured its 212^th murder of the year, for an average of 7.85 per week.

And, by God, National Security Minister Warner got results—the same day! Only six pages later in that same day’s edition of the Guardian, was the headline Deputy Commissioner Ewatski: 34% crime reduction in Maraval:

Ewatski is claiming the decrease is a result of the 21st-century policing initiative implemented to introduce a more modern and innovative approach to policing.

But Jack Ewatski (who, like Commissioner Gibbs, is white and Canadian—he was Winnipeg’s chief of police) did not explain these extraordinary reductions. And they met with significant skepticism:

At a public meeting in Maraval, where he announced the reductions, DC Ewatski met with well-organized resistance from the opposition party PNM [People’s National Movement, black-dominated]. Diego Martin North East PNM MP [Member of Parliament] Colm Imbert was at the meeting, and countered that not only does he have no idea what “the 21st-century policing initiative” involves, but that contrary to DC Ewatski’s claims, violent crime was actually up.

“How do you measure that? I’m trying to understand how you arrived at that figure,” Imbert asked. Unfazed, Ewatski, who said he lived in the community, said, “Based on the statistics we keep, I am saying that crime has reduced by 34 per cent. That is the information I have.”…

Imbert said: “I am not aware that there has been any reduction in crime. In fact, I know there has been an increase in the number of robberies in the area.... I cannot say there is any improvement as a result of this initiative.”’

(Diego Martin is, with Laventille, Morvant, and Belmont, one of the towns considered the most violent in the country. All are black. MP Imbert, however, is white).

Resident Stephanie Thomas echoed Imbert’s sentiments. Thomas said the police were “too unjust” and did not have an amicable relationship with members of the community. Thomas said she made several reports to the police about robberies she had witnessed, but to no avail. She said she now had to take matters into her own hands, as the police “doh care about we”’

“I will be sharpening my [machete] blade back and forth. I have two girl children and I have to protect them. I have had it up to here with the police…I don’t know what wrong with them. I called the station to report a robbery I saw. Up to this day, I still waiting on them to come.”

[Deputy Commissioner Ewatski: 34% crime reduction in Maraval by Cherisse Moe, Guardian, Saturday, June 30, 2012.]

All I’ve managed to find out about so-called “the 21st-century policing initiative” is that it entails closing police precincts during off-peak hours and giving public lectures on the anti-gang laws—practices that are guaranteed not to reduce crime.

On July 3, Police Service Public Relations Officer Joanne Archie made even more dramatic claims of crime reductions over the last three months in the Western District, which includes Maraval.

 “Yesterday, Archie said there was a 47 percent decrease in murders, a 43 percent decrease in house larceny and a 40 percent decrease in vehicular larceny. ... The initiative is expected to be rolled on in phases in the other police divisions in the country. ”

[Police defend 21st Century Initiative by Janelle de Souza, Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, July 4, 2012.]

Ironically when the-ruling PNM was looking for a new police commissioner in 2008, one of the finalists was New York’s Louis Vega.

Vega had been commander of the NYPD’s 50th Precinct in the South Bronx, but lost his command in 1996, after delivering an official crime reduction of 40 percent in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period in 1995.

Vega’s implausible numbers were too much even for then-NYPD Commissioner Howard Safir. [See my 2004 VDARE.com article "Disappearing" Urban Crime.]

Both major TT political parties have long had American consultants selling them the newest failed fads from the North.

My guess: The “21st-century policing initiative” has just imported U.S.-style "disappearing urban crime” to the West Indies.