THE EPIDEMIC of murders, many of them guns and drugs related, continue to be a nightmare for a number of Caribbean Community states, including the major member countries –Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana and Barbados. While the media continues to record, with almost daily frequency, the depressing news of the killings and armed robberies that are now increasingly numbering women, pensioners and young teenagers among the victims, there is the danger of citizens becoming numb to the crime of murder. This must be avoided in all countries of this region.
The problem is so challenging that in some jurisdictions, when the police provide statistics on murders including those resulting from armed robberies and crimes of passion, they feel obliged to point to comparative reductions, even as the data point to an ongoing rampage of killings.
Take, for example, the reporting yesterday by the Trinidad and Tobago media of seven murders committed in four separate incidents on Friday. Those killings brought the total number of murders to 263, but the police did not miss the opportunity to explain that compared to the same January-August period last year, there were 62 less murders so far for 2011.
The police of Jamaica and sections of that country’s media had earlier taken a similar approach in pointing to an estimated 42 per cent drop in murders for the first quarter of 2011 compared with the same period last year, even in the face of 204 killings.
Once stigmatized as ‘the murder capital’ of this hemisphere, it is understandable why Jamaica, which depends heavily on the foreign exchange earnings that flow from its vital tourism sector, would be ever anxious to draw comparisons in murder rates.  
Here in Guyana, we have already recorded at least 74 murders for the year, and there are growing concerns that gun-related murders are becoming almost routine with every passing week. What is particularly disturbing are the reported cases of complicity in some gun-related crimes that involve links with corrupt cops. Such criminal behaviour undermines the very foundation of a Police Force as the guardian of the society.
In this context, it is perhaps relevant to inquire when last has there been a meeting of CARICOM Ministers responsible for National Security (some are titled Ministers of Home Affairs) along with the region’s Police Commissioners?  
While, at times, they have had their separate regional meetings, it is to be wondered whether, in view of the prevailing serious crime epidemic, should consideration not be given to a special brainstorming or strategising conference of the region’s top-cops and ministers responsible for crime and security that could result in new ideas and approaches to beat back the armed killers and robbers causing so much wasting of lives and grief in too many countries of our region?