RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Po­lice of­fi­cers say they are com­mit­ted to and are seem­ing­ly on tar­get to meet Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s three-month time­line to re­duce se­ri­ous crime and mur­ders in par­tic­u­lar.

This was the as­sur­ance giv­en by ACP Win­ston Ma­haraj dur­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Ma­haraj claimed that they had al­ready achieved a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes, which in­cludes mur­der, de­spite the fact that the mur­der count is al­ready 154 for the year so far.

“We have a re­duc­tion ac­tu­al­ly in se­ri­ous crimes in T&T, an 18 per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes. Of course, the mur­der toll takes away from that fig­ure so we are on our way to nor­mal­is­ing the en­vi­ron­ment,” Ma­haraj said.

He added that all po­lice of­fi­cers are com­mit­ted to the ef­fort and “over time, we will see the re­sult.”

“We hope that we can ful­fil it. We gave a com­mit­ment. We are do­ing our part. Of course, the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of crimes be­ing com­mit­ted, very few, a neg­li­gi­ble amount, is com­mit­ted by po­lice of­fi­cers, our law en­force­ment. The ma­jor­i­ty is com­mit­ted by the cit­i­zen­ry, so the po­lice (ser­vice), in fact, is do­ing its part to pre­vent crimes and where they oc­cur to ar­rest.”

Ma­haraj al­so called on the pub­lic to help them.

“The cit­i­zen­ry needs to be re­spon­si­ble, take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their ac­tions, and where ac­tiv­i­ty is tak­ing place of a crim­i­nal na­ture, draw it to the at­ten­tion of the po­lice so that the in­ter­ven­tion could be made,” he said.

“We are get­ting clos­er to June and giv­ing our best ef­fort to nor­malise and meet that time­line,” he added.

Ma­haraj said so far for the year, 190 firearms, in­clud­ing 23 high-pow­ered ri­fles, and sev­er­al thou­sand rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion have been re­cov­ered by po­lice.

He added that while the mur­der count stood at 154, they had man­aged to de­tect 21 per cent of those crimes.

In March, CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher promised a re­duc­tion in crime in three months as she ap­peared be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of the Par­lia­ment.

Last week, Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so de­tailed a 10-point plan to re­duc­ing crime dur­ing a sym­po­sium at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

She list­ed pre­ci­sion polic­ing, fo­cus­ing the re­sources of the po­lice to ad­dress vi­o­lent crime, dis­man­tling of gangs by us­ing pre­ci­sion polic­ing and leg­is­la­tion, tar­get­ing com­mu­ni­ties with high re­ports of crime and re­trieval of il­le­gal guns as part of the plan. She al­so said fo­cus will be placed on transna­tion­al crime by us­ing avail­able re­sources to tar­get gun and drug traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing and cy­ber­crime.

Al­so speak­ing at the brief­ing yes­ter­day was act­ing Snr Supt Clint Arthur, of the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol. He promised ze­ro-tol­er­ance on law break­ers, adding of­fi­cers will be out in full force for this long week­end con­duct­ing speed, DUI, stop and search ex­er­cis­es along the na­tion’s roads in Trinidad and in To­ba­go, as well as an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es with­in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in both is­lands.

Arthur said for the year so far, 2,532 speed­ing tick­ets had been is­sued whilst 108 dri­vers were ar­rest­ed for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence.

Sgt Brent Bat­son al­so said there have been three pedes­tri­an deaths thus far, com­pared to 12 for the same pe­ri­od last year.