Derek Achong

Po­lice re­ports of rape, in­cest and oth­er sex­u­al of­fences have gone up by 100 per cent in 2012. Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (DCP) Mervyn Richard­son, in a tele­phone in­ter­view last night, at­trib­uted the in­crease in re­ports to a rise in con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

He said that from as ear­ly as Mon­day, sev­er­al new ini­tia­tives would be launched by the Po­lice Ser­vice to com­bat crime. "We (the ex­ec­u­tive of the Po­lice Ser­vice) have had some chal­lenges in the past few weeks, but we have put mea­sures in place," Richard­son said. He added that these new mea­sures would be both proac­tive and re­ac­tive.

"As part of the plan, there will be in­creased po­lice pres­ence through­out T&T," Richard­son said. He said the po­lice had been work­ing tire­less­ly to stem the mur­der rate. Richard­son said he met with of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the new an­ti-crime plan.

The IATF is man­dat­ed to pa­trol the streets of east Port-of-Spain and Laven­tille-the dis­trict which has record­ed the most mur­ders in the coun­try in the past ten years. Of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics on the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Crime Sta­tis­tic data­base show the po­lice re­ceived 256 re­ports of sex­u­al of­fences for the first three months of the year.

This fig­ure rep­re­sents a sub­stan­tial rise com­pared to last year, which saw 123 re­ports for the first three months of the year. Of the 256 re­port­ed in­ci­dents, the sta­tis­tic states that 166 have been solved by de­tec­tives, a per­cent­age of al­most 65 per cent.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, head of the Po­lice Ser­vice Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) Mar­garet Samp­son-Browne could not con­firm the in­crease record­ed in the sta­tis­tics. How­ev­er, she agreed with Richard­son that the in­crease may be due to a rise in pub­lic con­fi­dence in the po­lice.

"We are do­ing mar­vel­lous work in the com­mu­ni­ties," she said. "We are build­ing more trust these com­mu­ni­ties. Peo­ple feel more com­fort­able with the po­lice. This en­cour­ages wit­ness­es and vic­tims of crime to come for­ward." Samp­son-Browne, a re­tired as­sis­tant po­lice com­mis­sion­er not­ed that sup­port groups which are run by her unit to as­sist vic­tims of crimes have in­creased in size in the past few months.

In the most re­cent high-pro­file case of sex­u­al abuse this year, a 50-year-old PH taxi dri­ver ap­peared in court ac­cused of 11 counts of sex­u­al as­sault. Ab­dul Samad, al­so known as Roger Danglade and Abu, of Spring­vale, Clax­ton Bay, ap­peared in the Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trates' Court on Tues­day for al­leged­ly bug­ger­ing a 16-year-old boy and com­mit­ting griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault on the teen last year.

Samad will reap­pear in court on May 9. De­spite an in­crease in re­ports of sex­u­al of­fences, the mur­der toll for the first three months of this year was 91 as com­pared to 104 last year-a 13-per-cent de­crease. How­ev­er, of the 91 mur­ders that were record­ed, the po­lice sta­tis­tics showed that on­ly nine were solved. Four mur­ders were de­tect­ed in Jan­u­ary, two in Feb­ru­ary and five in the month of March.

Of the 343 mur­ders record­ed last year, 56 were solved. Yes­ter­day, the mur­der toll stood at 107, af­ter a long East­er week­end which saw 12 peo­ple be­ing mur­dered, among them three res­i­dents of La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma, who were shot dead in less than 24 hours on East­er Mon­day.

Se­nior homi­cide de­tec­tives said sev­er­al sus­pects have been de­tained this week in con­nec­tion with the spate of mur­ders. Up to late yes­ter­day, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions had not been con­tact­ed to de­ter­mine whether crim­i­nal charges should be laid against the sus­pects who were in cus­tody.Homi­cide de­tec­tives are said to be still gath­er­ing ev­i­dence on the mur­ders and cross-ref­er­enc­ing in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from var­i­ous in­for­mants, a se­nior of­fi­cer said.

The sta­tis­tics al­so show a marked de­crease in bur­glar­ies, with 640 re­port­ed in­ci­dents for the first quar­ter this year as com­pared to 1,119 last year.