Jensen La Vende

With the mur­der toll now at 391, nine mur­ders short of 400 for the year and eight short of the pro­ject­ed fig­ure of 399 by the year's end, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams said that for 2014 the aim was to tar­get armed vi­o­lence in the East West Cor­ri­dor which would see se­ri­ous crime in the coun­try dras­ti­cal­ly plum­met­ing.

Speak­ing at the week­ly press brief­ing which was turned to a me­da ap­pre­ci­a­tion lun­cheon at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Williams said that in 2014 the Po­lice Ser­vice would em­bark on ac­tiv­i­ties that would have a ma­jor im­pact on mur­ders, shoot­ings, wound­ings and oth­er vi­o­lent of­fences.He said the four of­fences were part of the 32 in­tend­ed tar­gets for re­duc­tion this year.

Williams said 26 of the ser­vice's over­all 32 in­tend­ed tar­gets have been met with the hope that by year's end that fig­ure would be 28 tar­gets achieved. Of the tar­gets achieved Williams said was the re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes, vi­o­lent crimes, fa­tal ac­ci­dents and traf­fic ac­ci­dents. He said the Po­lice Ser­vice was not able to achieve one of the main tar­gets, which was the re­duc­tion in mur­ders. The mur­der toll for last year was 379.

He said firearm re­cov­ery must be a pri­or­i­ty in the com­ing year be­cause in 2013 of all the mur­ders com­mit­ted guns have been the weapons of choice with over 70 per cent of the mur­ders be­ing gun-re­lat­ed.Williams said the 360 il­le­gal guns re­cov­ered for the year so far was not enough and the po­lice must do more and the porous bor­ders must be pro­tect­ed.

"As we en­ter 2014 we recog­nise that armed vi­o­lence is the area of great­est con­cern for the cit­i­zens and if that is the area of con­cern for the cit­i­zens then it must be one of the pri­or­i­ty con­sid­er­a­tions for the po­lice," Williams said.He called on the pow­ers that be to do more for the so­cial ills of the so­ci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the East West Cor­ri­dor.He added: "The is­sue is not around polic­ing. Crime is a so­cial mat­ter and there must be a broad­er con­sid­er­a­tion of the so­cial is­sues con­fronting the coun­try.

"The East West Cor­ri­dor can be iden­ti­fied as the broad lo­ca­tion for the ma­jor­i­ty of vi­o­lent crimes. We have seen 73 per cent of the year's killing oc­cur­ring from Care­nage to Ari­ma."It is crit­i­cal that we look at the is­sue be­yond po­lice and clear­ly iden­ti­fy that there is a need for far broad­er con­sid­er­a­tion to be giv­en to the im­prove­ment of the qual­i­ty of life for the cit­i­zens in the East West Cor­ri­dor.

"If that is not ad­dressed we will con­tin­ue to have an is­sue with vi­o­lent crime in the coun­try. If the East West Cor­ri­dor is prop­er­ly ad­dressed then vi­o­lent crime would be in­signif­i­cant in the coun­try."He added that in a short time in ex­cess of 1,300 marked po­lice ve­hi­cles would be pa­trolling the streets. Of­fi­cers who work in of­fices would be pulled out to do pa­trols to have a very vis­i­ble pres­ence of po­lice of­fi­cers.

Williams said the Po­lice Ser­vice had re­ceived ex­treme­ly high lev­els of co-op­er­a­tion and sup­port from the pub­lic which sig­nalled a grow­ing part­ner­ship be­tween the two and thanked the pub­lic for the co-op­er­a­tion and sug­ges­tions in polic­ing the coun­try.