Rose­marie Sant

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams says the Po­lice Ser­vice was "not throw­ing its hands up in the air" but was do­ing every­thing with­in its pow­er to en­sure that cit­i­zens feel safer and that crime was brought un­der con­trol.

In the first month of the year 13 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and charged for mur­ders and 65 il­le­gal guns seized, he said.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian Williams said po­lice are fight­ing crime at all lev­els.

He said, "We are not putting our hands up in the air and cry­ing, we are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that the prob­lem is dealt with, we are push­ing, work­ing hard, and I as­sure you we will see the progress, we will see a com­par­a­tive re­duc­tion in mur­ders and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes."

With close to 60 mur­ders for the year Williams ad­mit­ted "homi­cides are a big tick­et item and we have in­creased our ef­forts to deal with it. We have dou­bled the staff at the homi­cide bu­reau, but we al­so have to pre­vent the homi­cides."

There has been a 20 per cent solve rate for the mur­ders com­mit­ted with 13 peo­ple be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged.

But Williams said there are some mur­ders "we can­not pre­vent, a broth­er killing his broth­er, a daugh­ter stab­bing her fa­ther, a cousin killing a cousin in an ar­gu­ment, that is mur­der but po­lice can't stop that."

In an ef­fort to keep the homi­cide rate down, he said, "We have de­vel­oped the hotspot polic­ing ap­proach so every sin­gle day po­lice are out in lo­ca­tions where the like­li­hood of crime is high­er than oth­er places. We out there every sin­gle day get­ting guns and ar­rest­ing peo­ple, we dri­ving hard in deal­ing with the prob­lem."

To en­sure that his men are out in the 'hotspot' ar­eas where they have been as­signed, he said, "ve­hi­cles have been in­stalled with GPS track­ing sys­tems, we have the most com­pre­hen­sive track­ing of GPS in pa­trol ves­sels in the world, so we know where the ve­hi­cles are on a 24/7 ba­sis."

This, he said, was of tremen­dous ben­e­fit to com­mu­ni­ties, "be­cause while every­body look­ing at homi­cides there has been a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in vi­o­lent crimes in shoot­ings for the year."

In 2016 there were 60 shoot­ings and wound­ings in the month of Jan­u­ary, for the same pe­ri­od this year, he said, it was down to 29.

Williams said on a dai­ly ba­sis "the po­lice are ap­pre­hend­ing per­sons who com­mit crimes al­most im­me­di­ate­ly." Those crimes he said are "main­ly rob­beries but with­in min­utes the per­pe­tra­tors are ar­rest­ed. The num­ber of per­sons be­fore the mag­is­trates court on a dai­ly ba­sis for new crimes is tes­ti­mo­ny to the work we are do­ing."

He ad­mit­ted though he was "not sat­is­fied" with the de­tec­tion rate.

"I will nev­er be hap­py with the rate un­til we are at 100 per cent."

Williams said he has no­ticed that the pub­lic has been more help­ful and this was help­ing to solve crimes faster.

"I have seen a grow­ing pos­i­tive trend of pub­lic sup­port that is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in the fight to fix the prob­lem."

Williams urged cit­i­zens who have re­ports of crime to make their re­ports and "any­one who feels they are not treat­ed prop­er­ly should re­port it to the Di­vi­sion­al Com­man­der be­cause we need to treat with it."

To this end, he said, he has pub­lished the names and phone num­bers of each di­vi­sion­al com­man­der in the TTPS quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine which was avail­able in all po­lice sta­tions.

He said it was a "small group of per­sons" re­spon­si­ble for the spate of crime in the coun­try, Williams as­sured that his men are out in the field, in­tent on bring­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment to jus­tice.

Laws need­ed to de­ny

re­peat of­fend­ers bail

Williams said two pieces of leg­is­la­tion are crit­i­cal to win the bat­tle against crime– the Bail (Amend­ment) Act and the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion. He said pre­vi­ous­ly when both pieces of leg­is­la­tion were in place "it helped. It will take many oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion all put to­geth­er to com­ple­ment each oth­er to give us res­o­lu­tion to what we want for Trinidad and To­ba­go." The leg­is­la­tion pre­vent­ed bail be­ing grant­ed to re­peat of­fend­ers for over 120 days. It ex­pried in Au­gust last year af­ter a tri­al pe­ri­od.

Williams said the Po­lice Ser­vice has even gone be­yond its reach to ad­dress crime in an­oth­er way. "We have set up 121 youth clubs across the coun­try help­ing 11, 000 young peo­ple be­tween the ages of five and 25 with an aim to nur­tur­ing them, teach­ing them dis­ci­pline, en­cour­ag­ing them to get their ed­u­ca­tion, all with the aim of mak­ing them bet­ter cit­i­zens."

He said com­mu­ni­ties need to get in­volved, "every­one has a role to play, fam­i­lies, church­es, gov­ern­ment, the op­po­si­tion, schools, we need to get in­volved." To this end, he com­mend­ed, the group Pow­er­ful Ladies of Trinidad and To­ba­go which he said had launched an app to al­low com­mu­ni­ties to send in­for­ma­tion about crimes in their com­mu­ni­ty. This, he said, was "in­dica­tive of want­i­ng to do some­thing tan­gi­ble to ad­dress the prob­lem."

In ad­di­tion, he said, the oth­er arms of the jus­tice sys­tem need to be ad­dressed. "This is not just about the po­lice. There are 975 per­sons charged with mur­der and wait­ing on tri­al in the prison, they can­not be tried. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is part of it. The DPP's of­fice is un­der-staffed the DPP him­self said the staff short­age is crip­pling his de­part­ment, we have to look at all the pieces."