Geisha Kow­lessar

Of the 91 mur­ders for 2013 so far, sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the Po­lice Ser­vice's Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) show on­ly eight have been solved.This rep­re­sent­ed a de­tec­tion rate of less than ten per cent.De­tec­tion, says Dana See­ta­hal, SC, means that some­one has been ar­rest­ed and charged for a crime. It doesn't mean the cul­prit has been found guilty in court.

De­spite re­peat­ed ini­tia­tives, there is still pub­lic dis­sat­is­fac­tion over the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to ar­rest crim­i­nals and solve crimes. Last Fri­day, T&T Guardian's colum­nist Gillian Lucky and di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty wrote that the crime sit­u­a­tion had mush­roomed and the suc­ces­sive po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions had failed to build on the work­able crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives of the pre­vi­ous one.

"For the past five years, I have been track­ing the crime sta­tis­tics that deal with the re­port­ing and de­tec­tion of se­ri­ous and vi­o­lent crimes and, over that pe­ri­od, the fig­ures show that the av­er­age de­tec­tion rate moved from a dis­mal 24 per cent to an abysmal 14 per cent."Ob­vi­ous­ly, there is in­suf­fi­cient re­sort to sci­en­tif­ic means to de­tect crim­i­nals and the ban­dits are way ahead," Lucky wrote.

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds said the coun­try con­tin­ued to ex­pe­ri­ence an abysmal de­tec­tion rate. The prob­lem was mul­ti-faceted, and in his view the ma­jor ob­sta­cle is un­trained po­lice.Hinds ac­cused the Po­lice Ser­vice of be­ing "stingy" and "skimpy" when it came to spend­ing mon­ey to send of­fi­cers abroad for train­ing.

"The Po­lice Ser­vice is skimp­ing in terms of in­vest­ment and train­ing of its per­son­nel, es­pe­cial­ly the train­ing need­ed to in­crease the de­tec­tion rate," he said. "Some years ago of­fi­cers used to con­t­a­m­i­nate the very crime scenes they had to in­ves­ti­gate be­cause they were not prop­er­ly trained in gath­er­ing ev­i­dence.

"We now have the Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit be­cause of­fi­cers have been trained to care­ful­ly comb a crime scene and prop­er­ly gath­er ev­i­dence. But the de­tec­tion rate is still very low."An­oth­er fac­tor in the in­creas­ing­ly low de­tec­tion rate, he says, is the dis­band­ing of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit (Sautt), which gath­ered in­tel­li­gence on gangs, mur­der sus­pects and or­gan­ised crime.

Lucky, who al­so laud­ed the ef­forts of Sautt, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused on best prac­tices in in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the use of tech­nol­o­gy to de­tect the iden­ti­ty of crim­i­nals.The sale of the con­tro­ver­sial blimp, which was bought for US$15 mil­lion and lat­er sold for US$50,000 un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, al­so dealt a se­vere blow to the po­lice be­ing able to ar­rest crim­i­nals, Hinds said.

"The blimp had a re­al psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect on crim­i­nals," he said."They knew some­one was al­ways watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to them. But with that gone, the flood­gate has been opened."He de­scribed the coun­try's coastal ar­eas as a "low fence," as the Gov­ern­ment has not made any ef­fort to fix the 360-de­gree coastal radar sys­tem. It was set up at strate­gic points along the coast to mon­i­tor ves­sels mov­ing in and out of T&T wa­ters, but sev­er­al points along the coast are now blind spots.

When for­mer Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er as­sumed the role of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in Ju­ly last year, he promised the radar sys­tem would be fixed, but this is yet to be done.

Wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme

A key el­e­ment in solv­ing crime de­pend­ed heav­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of eye­wit­ness­es, but the coun­try's wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, Hinds said, al­so left much to be de­sired.In No­vem­ber 2011, then min­is­ter of jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney said the min­istry in­tend­ed to up­grade the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of the pro­gramme.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, Vol­ney said: "Twen­ty-five mil­lion dol­lars is be­ing ex­pend­ed to keep wit­ness­es alive in the wit­ness pro­tec­tion plan. In the last months, we have seen 117 cas­es in­volv­ing vic­tims and their fam­i­lies. Wit­ness­es and their fam­i­lies have to be pro­tect­ed. They don't have phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to deal with that. We are putting in place a mea­sure deal­ing with the next gen­er­a­tion."

Un­der the Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Act, of­fences which may give rise to pro­tec­tion un­der the pro­gramme in­clude mur­der, manslaugh­ter, pos­ses­sion or use of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, ag­gra­vat­ed as­sault, shoot­ing or wound­ing, armed rob­bery and ar­son.When Vol­ney was fired in Sep­tem­ber, To­ba­go-born at­tor­ney Christlyn Moore took up the man­tle of Jus­tice Min­is­ter.What has Moore done to im­prove the pro­gramme?"Noth­ing. She is a new­bie with an at­ti­tude," Hinds said.

And in the same breath, Hinds ac­cused so­ci­ety of be­ing "treach­er­ous," say­ing cit­i­zens who de­lib­er­ate­ly turned a blind eye were just as guilty."Cit­i­zens in T&T are very de­ceit­ful, de­cep­tive and sud­den­ly every­body is afraid to give ev­i­dence and do not want to help the po­lice," he said.Pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion act­ing In­sp Anand Rame­sar al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­vamp the pro­gramme to make it more ef­fec­tive.

"Wit­ness­es com­ing for­ward to give ev­i­dence still re­mains a chal­lenge...Ac­cess­ing the pro­gramme still re­mains prob­lem­at­ic as there is a lot of red tape to en­counter," he added.In ad­di­tion, he said, the pub­lic was gen­er­al­ly re­luc­tant to step for­ward to give ev­i­dence, es­pe­cial­ly in mur­der cas­es, be­cause they were afraid for their lives.

"If it is a case in­volv­ing the po­lice, every­body wants to be a wit­ness but out­side of that, if a mur­der hap­pens in Laven­tille, for in­stance, it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to get wit­ness­es," Rame­sar said."Hence the rea­son why we have such a high num­ber of un­solved mur­ders. Peo­ple pre­tend not to see."

Crime Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit ex­posed

With the re­cent di­rec­tive giv­en by Prime Min­is­ter Ka­mal Per­sad-Bisses­sar for more po­lice to be out on the streets, the Crime Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit, which played a key part in ar­rests, has been com­pro­mised, Rame­sar said.He said the as­so­ci­a­tion was look­ing in­to claims, as re­cent as last week, from mem­bers of the unit that they had been man­dat­ed to be out on pa­trol, a move Rame­sar said had put them in a dan­ger­ous po­si­tion.

"We have got sev­er­al com­plaints from the of­fi­cers, who said they are now ex­posed to crim­i­nals, es­pe­cial­ly in very high-risk ar­eas where they gath­er in­for­ma­tion," he said."This unit has been gath­er­ing in­tel­li­gence on mur­ders, gang-re­lat­ed crimes and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes–and now it seems this has all gone down the drain and it is on­ly ob­vi­ous this move would not lead to any ar­rests."He said there were too many peo­ple in the po­lice who did not have a clue about polic­ing but were giv­ing or­ders.

Foren­sic cen­tre run­ning like a gro­cery

The longer it takes for a body to be brought to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James, the high­er the chances of ev­i­dence be­ing tam­pered with or lost and there­fore the less like­ly it is that the case will be solved, said pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov.

Alexan­drov, who has worked ex­ten­sive­ly in the US, Eu­rope and the Mid­dle East, said he had nev­er en­coun­tered a foren­sic fa­cil­i­ty any­where else which opened at 9 am and closed at 4 pm. In­ter­na­tion­al foren­sic cen­tres, he said, opened 24 hours a day so that the bod­ies could be processed and the au­top­sies done im­me­di­ate­ly.

As it is, he said: "The lat­est we would re­ceive a body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre would be 3 pm. We can­not store bod­ies, be­cause our two fridges are filled with uniden­ti­fied bod­ies."When the cen­tre is closed, in the in­ter­im the bod­ies are kept at the Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al hos­pi­tals and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope–and be­tween that time when the bod­ies leave those places and fi­nal­ly come to the cen­tre, a num­ber of things could hap­pen," Alexan­drov said.

He rec­om­mend­ed that a Na­tion­al Miss­ing and Uniden­ti­fied Per­sons Sys­tem, which is used in the US, should be im­ple­ment­ed. The sys­tem nar­rows down the search by us­ing phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics or oth­er spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion about the per­son, such as den­tal records.In T&T an au­top­sy can on­ly be done once the body is iden­ti­fied by rel­a­tives. Even for the body to be ex­am­ined by a pathol­o­gist for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marks such as scars and tat­toos, fam­i­ly mem­bers must iden­ti­fy it.

Alexan­drov said at present there were 15 uniden­ti­fied bod­ies at the cen­tre."We can­not touch them be­cause no one has stepped for­ward to iden­ti­fy them. If the law was dif­fer­ent and we could have done au­top­sies on non-iden­ti­fied bod­ies, that would have al­so helped solve many cas­es."

De­tec­tion rate could be bet­ter

Train­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in the field of tech­nol­o­gy, is a top pri­or­i­ty of the Po­lice Ser­vice, said Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in charge of crime Mervyn Richard­son.He ad­mit­ted he was not sat­is­fied with the cur­rent de­tec­tion rate."But we have been do­ing things to bring it down," he said."We have sent away of­fi­cers for train­ing, we are us­ing more and more tech­nol­o­gy, we are us­ing DNA, we are us­ing CCTV cam­eras and our in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing is be­com­ing bet­ter."

Ap­peal­ing for the pub­lic's co-op­er­a­tion in solv­ing crimes, Richard­son agreed the Po­lice Ser­vice still en­coun­tered the prob­lem of wit­ness­es re­fus­ing to come for­ward."We don't get the pub­lic sup­port in that area...Wit­ness­es and in some cas­es the vic­tims are not will­ing to come for­ward due to fear of reprisal," he said."If peo­ple are not will­ing to come for­ward we will not have a good de­tec­tion rate."Asked if he was sat­is­fied with the per­for­mance of his charges, Richard­son said there was al­ways room for im­prove­ment.

"I am not hap­py with the de­tec­tion rate, it is a chal­lenge. But we are see­ing a greater ef­fort by all of our of­fi­cers," he said.Richard­son said it would be dif­fi­cult to com­pare T&T's de­tec­tion rate with oth­er coun­tries be­cause each coun­try had a dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tion fig­ure.

Box: De­tec­tion rate in oth­er coun­tries

Alexan­drov said the UK, with a pop­u­la­tion of about 60 mil­lion peo­ple, had a mur­der de­tec­tion rate of close to 75 per cent.In the US, with a pop­u­la­tion of 312 mil­lion, there was a de­tec­tion rate of close to 72 per cent.