For the first 205 days of this year, 300 peo­ple have been mur­dered and, if the trend con­tin­ues, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that last year’s 516 fig­ure will be sur­passed.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira told Guardian Me­dia from all trends T&T seems to be head­ing to the 500 fig­ure.

“As to the ex­act num­ber we can­not tell if it will come close or ex­ceed but what is giv­en it will reach 500,” he said.

In the last 25 years, the mur­der count on­ly sur­passed the 500 mark three times —in 2008 it went to a record high of 550, de­cline to 509 in 2009 and spike again in 2018 to 516.

“There are 160 days re­main­ing for the year and un­less po­lice can sup­press the surge in gang-re­lat­ed killings, which are blamed for the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders this year, the mur­der count will climb,” he said.

The lat­est killing of a fish­er­man and the mur­der of Jill-Ann Jerome who was shot dead while walk­ing along Bushe Street, Pe­tit Bourg, took the mur­der count to 300.

Jerome, 47, was found ly­ing in a pool of blood with a gun­shot wound to the head. She was tak­en to hos­pi­tal by San Juan po­lice of­fi­cers, where she was pro­nounced dead. Po­lice say Jerome had a child with a well-known un­der­world fig­ure who is in prison.

Figueira not­ed there was a new trend, which he de­scribed as a de­lib­er­ate act to kill peo­ple. He was re­fer­ring to the case where sev­en fish­er­men were thrown over­board af­ter their boat en­gines were tak­en.

“What is hap­pen­ing now is both on land and at sea mur­ders are tak­ing place. It is clear­ly a mes­sage be­cause they could have just robbed the men and not did what they did. It was reck­less en­dan­ger­ment mur­der es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that the boat en­gines were re­cov­ered in Sea Lots. All in­di­ca­tors point to lo­cal op­er­a­tion,” Figueira said.

Asked if the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith’s sig­nalling of the re­turn of the Po­lice Ma­rine Branch could help re­duce out at sea, Figueira said, “In the good old days Po­lice Ma­rine Branch car­ried the task of look­ing af­ter those close-to-shore ac­tiv­i­ties such as smug­gling and rob­beries. When it closed down the Coast Guard had to take over the task but while they were guard­ing the Gulf of Paria and Venezuela oth­er ar­eas re­mained glar­ing­ly un­pro­tect­ed. So with the re­turn of the Po­lice Ma­rine Branch it will help pro­tect fish­er­man as well.”

On De­cem­ber 12, 2018, T&T’s mur­der toll reached the 500 mark. Grif­fith said then reach­ing 500 homi­cides was a most un­ac­cept­able mile­stone for any coun­try but he not­ed: “If any­one thinks that it can be changed to 250 in a few months, they are wrong.”

In Oc­to­ber 2018 dur­ing an in­ter­view, Grif­fith told the me­dia the coun­try was on the path to hav­ing over 600 mur­ders record­ed for the year. He, how­ev­er, said that with the ini­tia­tives that he had im­ple­ment­ed, there was a re­duc­tion in killings. He said then there were over 70 oth­er ini­tia­tives he in­tend­ed to spear­head with­in 12 months. He said he hoped for the coun­try’s mur­der toll to re­turn to an “ac­cept­able lev­el” of 150 per year.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said he in­tend­ed to re­duce the homi­cide rate by 10 per cent which is al­ready ev­i­dent, “in the first six months there was a ten per cent de­crease...and this will con­tin­ue un­til we reach that 200, 150 tar­get per year.”