With the high-pro­file mur­der of act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons Wayne Jack­son and three oth­ers overnight on Tues­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ad­mit­ted that the scourge of crim­i­nal­i­ty con­tin­u­ing at a pace that is un­ac­cept­able.

But Young gave the as­sur­ance that there will be a re­newed and re­ju­ve­nat­ed ef­fort by the po­lice who will al­so be part of a new joint In­ter-Agency Task Force of all law en­force­ment agen­cies, in­clud­ing the T&T De­fence Force, SSA, in­tel­li­gence agen­cies and the T&T Prison Ser­vice.

Young said he has been pro­vid­ed with in­for­ma­tion on the lat­est mur­ders by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith and in some cas­es, oth­er arms of agen­cies.

“There is no doubt that Trinidad and To­ba­go right now is fight­ing a scourge of crime. I have to say and I’ve been very cau­tious I haven’t said it be­fore, that there has ac­tu­al­ly been a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of homi­cides with­in the past cou­ple of months,” Young said.

He, how­ev­er, added that this is not some­thing they are cel­e­brat­ing or even talk­ing about. Rather, he as­sured that they will con­tin­ue to utilise all of the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to them in the crime fight.

The mur­der toll for the year so far is 405. The mur­der toll up to Sep­tem­ber last year had stood at 371.

Young al­so as­sured that for every homi­cide com­mit­ted they will put as many re­sources as they pos­si­bly can to de­ter­mine the rea­son be­hind it, de­tect who is the per­pe­tra­tor and pros­e­cute him or her.

“So I am aware of it, the Po­lice Ser­vice is in­ves­ti­gat­ing all of those in­ci­dents and we will con­tin­ue to press on to fight this thing as hard as we can,” Young said. —Rhon­dor Dowlat