An­na-Lisa Paul

"I want that peo­ple can just share love with each oth­er and my vi­sion is for cit­i­zens to walk every part of T&T free from any form of in­ter­fer­ence and crime." This is the wish of act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams for the cit­i­zens of this coun­try as 2013 ap­proach­es.

Williams made the dis­clo­sure when asked by re­porters on Wednes­day what he want­ed to see in the com­ing year as he spoke of a re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime in the past four months. Speak­ing at a pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Williams said while the po­lice ser­vice was forg­ing ahead with its plan to make T&T safer, it was his per­son­al wish to get to the point "where crime is not a dom­i­nant is­sue on the lips of every cit­i­zen."

He said: "T&T has been struck with too much vi­o­lence over the years. We need to see the dis­ap­pear­ance of vi­o­lence from our so­ci­ety," the act­ing top of­fi­cer said. "All that we can do as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, we will do it, but we are be­seech­ing cit­i­zens to think twice be­fore they act in a vi­o­lent man­ner."

Williams said the po­lice ser­vice stood ready to as­sist in the area of anger man­age­ment and that all re­sources would be di­rect­ed to­wards help­ing cit­i­zens.

Boast­ing of a ma­jor re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes, es­pe­cial­ly vi­o­lent crimes for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber to No­vem­ber, Williams said: "We were av­er­ag­ing 35.5 mur­ders per month for the first eight months of the year but for Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber, we av­er­aged 25 mur­ders per month. We are hop­ing to keep it at 25 or even less for the month of De­cem­ber."

At­tribut­ing this re­duc­tion to the im­proved part­ner­ships at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, a smil­ing Williams said: "The po­lice ser­vice has re­ceived ex­ten­sive co-op­er­a­tion from the gen­er­al pub­lic in the last four months and that has helped us to im­prove our de­liv­ery of polic­ing ser­vices across the coun­try. We shall sure­ly win the bat­tle against crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty as we con­tin­ue to work in part­ner­ship."

Urg­ing busi­ness own­ers to call on the po­lice for as­sis­tance when­ev­er nec­es­sary, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, Williams vowed: "We are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble so while the pub­lic is out en­joy­ing, we will be polic­ing to make T&T a safer place for all. We aim to con­tin­ue the good work seen over the last four months as we con­tin­ue to reach out to the peo­ple of T&T for their con­tin­ued co-op­er­a­tion and sup­port."

Asked what the po­lice ser­vice count­ed as its ma­jor chal­lenge in 2012, Williams said it was con­stant­ly be­ing chal­lenged in the area of crime sta­tis­tics, as the of­fi­cial homi­cide count for 2012 up to Tues­day stood at 405. "While we recog­nise that some­times in ed­u­cat­ing the na­tion on is­sues around crime might be im­por­tant, as there were 405 homi­cides in T&T up to yes­ter­day (Tues­day), there is a ma­jor dis­tinc­tion be­tween homi­cides and mur­ders."

Williams said homi­cides in­clud­ed mur­ders, po­lice killings, mat­ters where the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions ruled that a de­fen­dant should be charged with mur­der, and un­nat­ur­al deaths. "There is con­flict and con­fu­sion with num­bers, but it is re­al­ly about a mis­un­der­stand­ing as it re­lates to ter­mi­nol­o­gy.

You hear the ex­ec­u­tive speak­ing about mur­ders and this con­flicts with homi­cides, be­cause some peo­ple use the terms in­ter­change­ably. But they are clear­ly two dis­tinct terms," he ex­plained.

He said the of­fi­cial mur­der toll up to Tues­day stood at 365. Asked about ini­tia­tives in place to fight crime in Laven­tille and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties, Williams said: "We con­tin­ue to work with Laven­tille and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties in a fo­cused and spe­cial way. The em­pha­sis is on this be­cause close to 26 per­cent of mur­ders for 2012 have oc­curred in Laven­tille and the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties."

"It is a small ge­o­graph­i­cal space in T&T re­spon­si­ble for an ex­treme­ly large per­cent­age of vi­o­lent crimes, and from a polic­ing per­spec­tive, it is crit­i­cal for us to fo­cus on this small ge­o­graph­i­cal space to make a dif­fer­ence on the na­tion­al av­er­age. We will be mov­ing for­ward by en­gag­ing peo­ple to im­prove life for those res­i­dents, and we be­lieve we can see a re­sul­tant drop if we con­tin­ue to do what we have al­ready start­ed."