Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For two con­sec­u­tive weeks, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has failed to achieve all nine of the per­for­mance tar­gets in its vi­o­lent crime re­duc­tion plan.

As of De­cem­ber 9, there was a six per cent in­crease in mur­ders, a 12 per cent de­crease in vi­o­lent crimes, a 12 per cent de­crease in Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crime (SRCs), a sev­en per cent in­crease in car thefts, a ten per cent in­crease in fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dents (RTAs), a 13 per cent de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders, an 18 per cent de­tec­tion rate for fraud, a 21 per cent de­tec­tion rate for vi­o­lent crimes and a 19 per cent de­crease in the num­ber of guns seized.

While there has been a de­crease in vi­o­lent crimes (wound­ings, shoot­ings, sex­u­al of­fences and kid­nap­pings) com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, these im­prove­ments and oth­ers re­main well be­low the re­quired fig­ures set by po­lice com­man­ders to be con­sid­ered a suc­cess.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta shared by the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch at meet­ings of se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers on De­cem­ber 2 and 9, the TTPS failed to meet all of the nine crime-fight­ing tar­gets.

The da­ta gen­er­at­ed in the pre­sen­ta­tions com­pared the per­for­mance of po­lice in pre­vent­ing dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of crime as well as ar­rest­ing and charg­ing per­pe­tra­tors this year to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2023.

The ob­jec­tives sought by the po­lice this year were:

• A ten per cent de­crease in mur­ders

• A 20 per cent re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime

• A 20 per cent re­duc­tion in Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes (SRCs)

• A ten per cent re­duc­tion in car thefts, a five per cent re­duc­tion in fa­tal Road Traf­fic Ac­ci­dents (RTAs)

• A 25 per cent de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders

• A 40 per cent de­tec­tion rate for fraud of­fences

• A 30 per cent de­tec­tion rate for vi­o­lent crime

• A 15 per cent in­crease in re­cov­ery of il­le­gal firearms

Last Feb­ru­ary, weeks af­ter she was con­firmed in of­fice, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher ap­peared be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pre­dict­ed a “short-term” change in the mur­der rate by June that year and a “long-term” change by De­cem­ber.

While there was a slow­down in the mur­der rate last year, Hare­wood-Christo­pher in an­oth­er JSC ap­pear­ance in Jan­u­ary, ad­mit­ted the tar­gets were “ex­ag­ger­at­ed” and meant to en­cour­age of­fi­cers to work to­wards achiev­ing the ob­jec­tives.

The TTPS has strug­gled to meet their per­for­mance tar­gets since ear­li­er this year when da­ta from CA­PA for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to May 13 showed that they were falling be­hind in five of their eight tar­get ob­jec­tives. At that time, T&T’s 2024 mur­der toll was still be­low last year’s cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure with 208 com­pared to 225.

The de­tec­tion rate at the time of those mur­ders was 11 per cent, well be­low the 20 per cent ob­jec­tive.

The goal of hav­ing a de­tec­tion rate for vi­o­lent crime of 25 per cent was al­so not met. It was 17 per cent at the time.

Car thefts were a chal­lenge as the TTPS failed to achieve a ten per cent de­crease, with a 17 per cent in­crease re­port­ed in­stead.

Po­lice al­so failed to achieve a 15 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of firearms re­cov­ered, with a drop of 28 per cent be­ing re­port­ed.

Some achieve­ments be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and May 13 in­clud­ed a 17 per cent drop in vi­o­lent crime, a 19 per cent drop in SRCs and a 19 per cent drop in fa­tal RTAs.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin who ad­vised this re­porter to send a mes­sage by What­sApp. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was re­ceived.

Are ini­tia­tives

yield­ing re­sults?

As of De­cem­ber 9, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion con­tin­ued to have the high­est mur­der toll in all ten po­lice di­vi­sions with 91 com­pared to 50 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

A re­port on the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion in No­vem­ber not­ed that the preva­lent prob­a­ble cause for mur­ders was gang vi­o­lence with the Bel­mont and Besson Street sta­tion dis­tricts hav­ing the high­est rates of vi­o­lence. The re­port added that mur­ders were most com­mon be­tween 4 pm and 12 am, while wound­ings and shoot­ings were most com­mon be­tween 8 am and 4 pm.

In Sep­tem­ber, it was re­port­ed that the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion along with the West­ern, Cen­tral, South­ern and East­ern Di­vi­sions would re­ceive sup­port from Joint Task Force One, a unit con­sist­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers and De­fence Force mem­bers. The ini­tia­tive is ex­pect­ed to last un­til Car­ni­val 2025 as part of crime sup­pres­sion ex­er­cis­es.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said while the crime sta­tis­tics were “trou­bling” they should not be seen sim­ply as ei­ther a suc­cess or fail­ure on the part of the po­lice, but rather an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the TTPS to fur­ther as­sess the ef­fec­tive­ness of its ini­tia­tives.

Dr Seep­er­sad not­ed that while there were some small im­prove­ments in re­duc­tions of crimes, he sug­gest­ed that this da­ta be mapped against what fac­tors led to these suc­cess­es and ap­plied on a larg­er scale for more wide­spread re­sults.

“In do­ing so they’ll be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to see what kinds of ini­tia­tives have the kind of im­pact that they’re look­ing for and then fo­cus on those types of ini­tia­tives to a greater de­gree and try to ‘widen the net’ so that you utilise ini­tia­tives which are work­ing on a wider scale. So, I would re­al­ly see this as an on­go­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty that the po­lice have where they could learn from what they are do­ing and try to iden­ti­fy what works from what doesn’t work and try to im­ple­ment what works on a wider scale,” he said.

As of Thurs­day evening, T&T’s mur­der toll was 577 com­pared to 542 for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

Last week, po­lice re­port­ed a slow­down in the rate of mur­ders for the year so far and ex­pressed some hope it would not sur­pass last year’s fi­nal fig­ure of 577.

But even if the mur­der toll grad­u­al­ly slows, oth­er cat­e­gories of crime re­main a con­cern.

As 2024 draws to a close, un­der­stand­ing what tan­gi­ble achieve­ments were ob­served from the work of the TTPS this year will be crit­i­cal in shap­ing the pub­lic’s trust and will­ing­ness to co­op­er­ate for the new year.