Joshua Seemu­n­gal

For the first time in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry, there were more than 600 homi­cides record­ed in a cal­en­dar year, mak­ing 2022 the coun­try’s dead­liest year ever.

With 33 days to spare, T&T reached its high­est-ever toll of 551 mur­ders.

The lives of cit­i­zens from all parts of the coun­try–from Port-of-Spain to Ma­yaro–

and from as young as one year old to 88 years old, were snuffed out in 2022.

As ear­ly as May, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds both ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion was ‘hor­ri­ble’.

“I can’t re­call a pe­ri­od of time, in a pe­ri­od of weeks, such vi­cious­ness of crime and fre­quen­cy of crime in and among fam­i­ly mem­bers, and out on the street. It was just a while ago that I made a com­ment that we are a vi­o­lent so­ci­ety and ap­par­ent­ly, peo­ple are at­tempt­ing to prove that state­ment true,” Dr Row­ley said on May 12.

In Ju­ly, at a post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence, the Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to de­clare vi­o­lent crime as a pub­lic health is­sue. The mur­der toll then was un­der 300.

“...Vi­o­lence across the so­ci­ety is now the norm–from do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, vi­o­lence in schools, the vi­o­lence of per­sons against per­sons, armed re­spons­es for every­thing, and, of course, the gains to be had by crim­i­nal con­duct where lives are lost and prop­er­ty is be­ing de­stroyed and stolen and so on. It is a whole pletho­ra of vi­o­lent, un­ac­cept­able con­duct,” Dr Row­ley said.

And as the pub­lic pres­sure on the Prime Min­is­ter to fire the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter mount­ed, he re­peat­ed­ly said he had no in­ten­tion to re­move the Laven­tille West MP from his min­is­te­r­i­al post.

In Au­gust, Dr Row­ley ad­mit­ted again that the coun­try’s crime rate was un­ac­cept­able. How­ev­er, once again, he re­peat­ed his be­lief in Min­is­ter Hinds.

“How we could change the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and that (crime rate) will change? If that was so, it would have changed un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. They had six na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters and when all of that failed, add to that, a state of emer­gency,” Dr Row­ley said on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form.

The PM claimed that the coun­try’s trou­bling crime rate was not unique to T&T, claim­ing that oth­er Caribbean is­lands were fac­ing sim­i­lar prob­lems.

This ex­pla­na­tion, how­ev­er, did lit­tle to al­le­vi­ate the grow­ing pub­lic pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the is­sue, which came from busi­ness cham­bers, or­di­nary cit­i­zens, and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Caribbean neigh­bours Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent, and St Lu­cia all had rel­a­tive­ly mur­der­ous years.

In mid-No­vem­ber, Bar­ba­dos passed 40 mur­ders for the year–its high­est num­ber since 2019.

Five days ago, St Lu­cia ar­rived at 72 mur­ders-two less than its 2021 to­tal.

Mean­while, Ja­maica passed 1,421 mur­ders three weeks ago–more than its re­port­ed fig­ure be­tween Jan­u­ary to ear­ly De­cem­ber 2021.

In re­sponse to its in­crease in gang vi­o­lence, which led to an av­er­age of five mur­ders a day in Sep­tem­ber, Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness re­newed states of emer­gency in eight parish­es on Thurs­day.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, in No­vem­ber, he an­nounced states of emer­gency at the re­gion­al lev­el, al­low­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agency mem­bers to ar­rest cit­i­zens with­out a war­rant.

In Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Hon­duras and El Sal­vador–con­sid­ered two of the most mur­der­ous coun­tries in the world with 17,434 mur­ders in 2021 be­tween them–have seen sig­nif­i­cant de­clines in homi­cides.

Gov­ern­ments of both Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries sus­pend­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to go af­ter gang lead­ers and mem­bers ear­li­er this year.

In March, El Sal­vador, with a pop­u­la­tion of 6.5 mil­lion peo­ple, ar­rest­ed more than 60,000 gang mem­bers. In ear­ly De­cem­ber, its homi­cide to­tal was 612, com­pared to a 2021 to­tal of 13,537.

Late last week, in a me­dia re­lease, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Christo­pher said the on­ly way to stop the surg­ing mur­ders and crime was to hit gang lead­ers in their pock­ets by dis­man­tling their fi­nan­cial em­pires.

File: Radhica Kalloo, mother of Nicholas Kallo, weeps at the scene of his murder in Gopual Ext 2, Picton Street, Diamond Village, San Fernando, in February.

Roberto Codallo

The num­bers

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), as of De­cem­ber 28, 2022, there were 598 con­firmed mur­ders in Trinidad and To­ba­go. 541 (91 per cent) of the vic­tims were male, while 57 (nine per cent) were fe­male.

The av­er­age age of the mur­der vic­tims was 38 years old.

•The youngest mur­der vic­tim was one-year-old No­va Bere­ton who was shot dead along with her moth­er, 30-year-old Sashell El­liott in Moru­ga in De­cem­ber.

•The old­est mur­der vic­tim was 88-year-old Eve­lyn Piper who was found dead in her Gas­par­il­lo home in De­cem­ber.

•20 mur­der vic­tims were teenagers, while five vic­tims were un­der the age of 13 years old.

•21 vic­tims were more than 65 years old.

The dead­liest lo­ca­tions

•The most mur­der­ous area of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2022 was Mor­vant/Laven­tille with 48 mur­ders. 26 peo­ple were killed in Mor­vant, while 22 were killed in Laven­tille.

•The sec­ond most mur­der­ous area was Ari­ma with 46 mur­ders.

•The third most mur­der­ous area was Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin with 38 mur­ders.

•Ch­agua­nas with 30 mur­ders was fourth.

•San Juan/Barataria with 28 mur­ders was fifth.

•Port-of-Spain with 21 mur­ders was sixth.

When the TTPS’ homi­cide da­ta for the six-month pe­ri­od be­tween No­vem­ber 2021 to April 2022 was ex­am­ined, there were 285 homi­cides.

The homi­cide sta­tis­tics ap­peared to be show­ing a shift to­wards more mur­ders in the East­ern and Cen­tral parts of the coun­try up to that point.

Ari­ma ranked as the dead­liest place in Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing that pe­ri­od, with Ch­agua­nas and San Juan/Barataria al­so rank­ing in the top four spots.

How­ev­er, the end-of-year homi­cide sta­tis­tics sug­gest­ed that there was a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in mur­ders in Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin and Mor­vant/Laven­tille from April on­wards.

By the end of the year, as men­tioned ear­li­er, Mor­vant/Laven­tille and Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin moved in­to the top three most mur­der­ous ar­eas.

Ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figu­iera, the in­crease in homi­cides in those ar­eas were large­ly as a re­sult of gang mem­bers seek­ing sanc­tu­ar­ies from peo­ple seek­ing to kill them.

“You have a lot of peo­ple who are be­ing sought and hunt­ed mov­ing and hid­ing, look­ing for sanc­tu­ary and man go­ing in­to those ar­eas and find­ing them and putting them down. So they are ac­tu­al­ly on the run be­cause they get the mes­sage ‘buy your cas­ket,’” Dr Figueira said.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and April 2022, there were ten mur­ders in Mor­vant/Laven­tille–an av­er­age of 2.5 mur­ders per month. There were 38 mur­ders in the fol­low­ing eight months–an av­er­age of close to five mur­ders per month.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and April 2022, there were al­so ten mur­ders in Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin–an av­er­age of 2.5 mur­ders per month. In the fol­low­ing eight months, 28 mur­ders were record­ed, an av­er­age of 3.5 mur­ders per month.

Mean­while, Ari­ma record­ed 18 mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary and April 2022. In the re­main­der of the year, there were an­oth­er 28 mur­ders–the same as Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin, but less than Mor­vant/Laven­tille.