The boys from Canada have nothing to lose should anyone wish to free them of their contracts. The Police Commissioner and his Deputy may even be privately hoping that sooner might be preferable to later. It is a win/win situation however you look at it. They may even be fed up with the "cocktails by the bucketful" social events that are part and parcel of the lives of senior police officers.

Messers Gibbs and Ewatski have given their suntans an added shine and kept their trim figures where the locals would have gained weight under the pressure meted out with regard to their 21st Century Policing strategies. Just think of the books they could write about policing in a Third World environment, adding even more money to their enviable pay packets.

Unnecessarily spiteful remarks have been made about the lack of success of their brand of policing in Trinbago. It is patently obvious that what we need to curb crime involves the employment of a host of very senior social workers and child psychiatrists in the school systems, beginning with the early-childhood schools.

Crime reduction will follow if we treat with the causes in a holistic manner. This may take another decade as time taken from kindergarten to tertiary education is approximately ten years. The crime plan is the people, and education is the vehicle of the crime plan. There is no quick fix to meaningful socialisation of the masses. Until then, one could only hope that the mayhem will gradually reduce.

No government is perfect. The perfection exists primarily in the eye of the beholder. The mistakes that have been made, and are still being made, see us existing in a society that only recognises personal profit as the final victory.

Until further notice (this may likely be the year 2015), we are collectively "living within the spin zone". The populace may be able to read and spell, but this is significantly different to "political read and spell."

Should they have to leave us, I would like to extend an invitation to officers Gibbs and Ewatski that they forever spend their winter months (our time for Christmas and Carnival) in Trinbago instead.

Lynette Joseph

via e-mail