RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles is mak­ing an ur­gent ap­peal to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to solve the mur­der of his cousin, TT RideShare dri­ver Sha­keem Charles, 32, and the oth­er vic­tims killed over the week­end.

With crime in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly hit­ting clos­er to home, Charles warned that un­less de­ci­sive, in­tel­li­gent, and vi­sion­ary ac­tion is tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly, 2024 could be­come the dead­liest year yet, with over 600 mur­ders.

Charles, echo­ing Eng­lish philoso­pher Thomas Hobbes, as­sert­ed that life in T&T is be­com­ing “soli­tary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

He said Sha­keem’s mur­der should be eas­i­ly solv­able, giv­en the wealth of ev­i­den­tial facts. He ques­tioned whether the TTPS has been able to fol­low the GPS tracks of Sha­keem’s ve­hi­cle or re­view CCTV footage from the road net­work. He al­so asked if a war­rant was is­sued to search the home of Sha­keem’s pas­sen­ger, if their phone calls were re­viewed, and if fin­ger­prints were tak­en from the ve­hi­cle.

Charles in­quired if CCTV footage from the ATM, where mon­ey was with­drawn from Sha­keem’s ac­count af­ter he was re­port­ed miss­ing, was ac­cessed by the po­lice. He is adamant that this mur­der can­not be dis­missed as an­oth­er ran­dom oc­cur­rence. He stressed that the per­pe­tra­tors must not be al­lowed to feel em­bold­ened by poor de­tec­tion rates and an in­ef­fi­cient po­lice force.

He crit­i­cised emp­ty plat­i­tudes and in­ef­fec­tive mea­sures to solve crime, not­ing that T&T has four times the num­ber of po­lice per capi­ta com­pared to Toron­to, yet a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er de­tec­tion rate.

Charles called for the lead­er­ship of the TTPS to use mod­ern foren­sic tech­nol­o­gy, en­force ex­ist­ing laws, and pur­sue crim­i­nal el­e­ments dili­gent­ly. He em­pha­sised the ur­gent need for spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able, at­tain­able, rel­e­vant, and time­ly (SMART) crime-fight­ing strate­gies to pro­tect the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion and en­sure the safe­ty of its cit­i­zens.

If the TTPS can­not han­dle the task, Charles said they should seek in­ter­na­tion­al help.

TT RideShare ex­pressed deep sor­row

Mean­while, TT RideShare ex­pressed deep sor­row over the mur­der of Sha­keem, ex­tend­ing their deep­est sym­pa­thy to his fam­i­ly, friends, and loved ones. The or­gan­i­sa­tion, in a state­ment re­leased over the week­end, said they have been in con­tact with Sha­keem’s fam­i­ly through­out the or­deal and will con­tin­ue to of­fer sup­port.

TT RideShare has been work­ing close­ly with the TTPS, shar­ing all meta­da­ta from the ap­pli­ca­tion con­nect­ed to Sha­keem’s ac­count to aid the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The com­pa­ny re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the po­lice and de­ter­ring crim­i­nal threats against their dri­vers.

TT RideShare con­demns the ac­tions of those who com­mit such crimes and pledges con­tin­ued sup­port for their dri­vers.