The year 2018 end­ed with 516 mur­ders, mak­ing it the sec­ond dead­liest year in the his­to­ry of T&T.

The year 2008 record­ed the high­est mur­der rate with 550 homi­cides be­ing com­mit­ted.

Of the 516 mur­ders in 2018, 430 of them re­main un­solved. These sta­tis­tics were dis­closed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) Branch.

For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to De­cem­ber 27, 2018, 13 spous­es (male and fe­male) were killed in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

There were 13 chil­dren killed, six of which were clas­si­fied as gang-re­lat­ed; three were do­mes­tic-vi­o­lence re­lat­ed; one was drug-re­lat­ed; one child was killed dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion; two re­main un­clas­si­fied.

Forty-sev­en fe­males were killed in 2018—this in­clud­ed three girls, 40 women, and four oth­ers whose ages are un­known.

With re­spect to law en­force­ment per­son­nel, six of them were killed—two po­lice of­fi­cers, one sol­dier, and three prison of­fi­cers.

Mean­while, po­lice said there were 179 gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders.

In his New Year's mes­sage for 2019, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith urged cit­i­zens to walk away from con­flicts. “Your life is worth more than that,” he added.

“As the sec­onds count down to mid­night be grate­ful that you’re here to see the dawn of a new year. To cit­i­zens, I ap­peal to you to be mind­ful of the need to be dis­ci­pline mind­ed, to curb ten­den­cies to ex­cess or ig­nore the most mi­nor of in­frac­tions of the law.

“May 2019 bring fur­ther suc­cess in our end­less bat­tle for the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. A hap­py new year to all.”