EVEN AWAY FROM her shores, the shock of the murder of Camille Daniel in the driveway of the West End Police Station on Wednesday chills the bones of the Trini to the marrow. Ms Daniel had driven into the station seeking police protection from the three gunmen who had carjacked her shortly before; they had the gall to kill her before jumping out of the car and running away.
This trumps everything Trinidad’s violent, hate-filled (most of it self-loathing), careless criminal underclass has done to date. The story of the man who shot the maxi-taxi conductor who made the mistake of asking him to pay his fare seems tame; the one of the gunman who put three bullets in the head of a state witness while he was washing a car in the street and then walked the 50m to the main road to hail a getaway taxi, too; even the murder in his own driveway of former National Security Minister Selwyn Richardson, destabilizing as that was to the national psyche, did not reach this point. Ms Daniel, who leaves her young army lance corporal husband a widower, had the presence of mind and courage to drive her attackers to a police station; and, for that, was murdered in plain view of the duty officer at the desk (assuming he cared to look up from his find-the-word puzzle).

Even in a movie, the audience would shriek, “NO!” – unless they trusted the filmmaker’s craft and understood that, dramatically, the story could not work without some fitting retribution, which would surely come.
But nothing will come of this in Trinidad; apart from more of the same. Soon, a gunman will hit on the idea of robbing police of their guns in the station. The only surprise in Trinidad is how many floodgates may be opened in sequence; and what little difference it makes to the floodwaters, apart from increasing the strength of their flow.
Knowing the police identified, from their own closed circuit cameras, a man running away from the station does little to assuage. (And here’s hoping, for his sake, the man was indeed the murderer and not a passing Diamond Vale resident who’d had a bad doubles and was sprinting for his toilet; that’s no joke, by the way, as you would know if you happened to be a young black man anywhere nearby the incident.) The man is no doubt assisting the police in such of their enquiries as are made with blunt instrument upon sensitive tissue, but that will only intensify, not reduce, the madness in a place that throws away its own Carnival and paves rainforests for smelters.
Trinidad’s descent into nothingness is complete, for all intents and purposes, including those of Satire and Despair. What do you do with Trinidad next, apart from wrap 300-odd kilometres of American poe-leece yellow crime scene tape around the entire firetrucking coastline? And then get another 100-odd for Tobago, too? Anything could happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Give them enough time and Trinidad’s bad men will find a way to rob the Prime Minister of his fancy curtains in the palace.
Even if many members of the force have become genuine (and deeply frustrated) professionals, most Trinidadians do not seriously expect anything other than harassment from our police. All my adult life, the expectation has always been that they will either be helpless in protecting the citizen – “We ent have no vehicle; you cyar axe the robber to come back in a next half-hour, whereby Corporal Short Pants should reach back from the roti shop?” – or downright callous.
And it’s only grown worse.
Over Christmas, visiting Trini friends told me of two separate robbery incidents where the victim, upon reaching the relevant station to make a report, turned around and left, because, in both cases, the victim recognised the perpetrators as plainclothes officers on the other side of the counter.
So the wise Trini has not expected a great deal of help from the police for almost a generation; but now the contempt in which they are held is undeniable. And if the bad men hold the lawmen in such view, how do they see the rest of us? What can the Commissioner of Police say? What can Minister Martin Joseph do? Trinidad has always existed on the edge of ridiculousness – that has always been its appeal – but how, now, is one meant to put one foot in front of the other in a place where the citizen can be murdered at a police station?
The worst thing is there are at least two worst things; one is that Trinidadians will refuse to make the connection between their own behaviour and the collapse of the country. Subtract the anti-smelter protesters and the Death Marchers and the Aranguez Savannah ralliers and you are left with hordes of people who care not one firetruck about the place, as long as they could snatch their share of the white people’ energy tax masquerading as the national budget – including the President, who should have resigned weeks ago, and the Prime Minister & Cabinet,  whose Eastern Caribbean Integration Talala is probably illegal, certainly illegitimate and in the same ballpark of contempt for the citizen as murder in a police station driveway;
And, two, by the time you read this, Trinidad will have moved on. As hugely symbolic as this murder between the gates of a police station is, it has already begun to pass, in Trini minds, into the realm of statistics; Camille Daniel was murder 270 for the year and numbers 271 through 300 will be along shortly; and one number will not seem so different from so many others, after all.
Especially when Trinidadians have Michael Jackson’s death to talk about at the next fete and the pelau eating sweet.
BC Pires is humming “Will You Be There?” You can email your weak protestations to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Comments (14)

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Some nice phrases there....
written by David, June 26, 2009

"the madness in a place that throws away its own Carnival and paves rainforests for smelters" - "Trinidad has always existed on the edge of ridiculousness"

Lovely!

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Forget the phrases....
written by manda, June 26, 2009

and forget that the lady they shoot like a dog (like so many other dogs) in front the po-lice station. You ent hear, Michael jackson dead?!
Honestly, what is left to say about the state of affairs? The same people who put Papa Patrick and Co where they are, are the same ones feeling the pain and wanting to call for blood now (not that Panday coulda do much better)....The only thing left to do is buy a ticket to England / US / Canada and let some white boy knock you up or knock up some white girl and secure your papers...

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Your article was well written, revealing and objective for a change, without the usual diatribe you appear to enjoy writing at varied times. There are many sides to your persona, forcing me at time to think, you are laughing at the ones who read your ramblings at times. However, reflect on this the struggle of a people against power, is a struggle of memory against forgetting.

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