RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

With about 20 mur­ders be­ing record­ed over the long East­er week­end, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob has ad­mit­ted he is very con­cerned but in­sists gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders were on the down-low.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on the CNC3 news on Wednes­day night, Ja­cob said do­mes­tic and al­ter­ca­tion-re­lat­ed mur­ders were now on the rise.

“All these mur­ders were in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances but what we have iden­ti­fied though, is that some of these mur­ders were do­mes­tic and al­ter­ca­tion-re­lat­ed mat­ters be­tween close friends, rel­a­tives and that is one of our ma­jor con­cerns,” Ja­cob said fol­low­ing a bloody East­er week­end where po­lice were kept busy with mur­ders, which con­tin­ued up to yes­ter­day with an­oth­er three homi­cides - push­ing the over­all mur­der tal­ly to 161.

He added that three of the week­end’s mur­ders were iden­ti­fied as rob­beries and four as gang-re­lat­ed.

“So ba­si­cal­ly, gang-re­lat­ed ap­pears to be on the low now and do­mes­tic and al­ter­ca­tion are now tak­en the front.”

Ja­cob said the Po­lice Ser­vice had in­creased its pres­ence in pub­lic over the hol­i­day pe­ri­od and proud­ly stat­ed that their re­sponse time has in­creased tremen­dous­ly.

“In fact, in three of the in­stances, po­lice were able to ar­rest per­sons right af­ter they would have com­mit­ted the act and at present, we have about sev­en per­sons in cus­tody by Homi­cide Bu­reau be­ing in­ter­viewed in re­la­tion to these mur­ders. About ten of these mur­ders, the prob­a­bil­i­ty fac­tor is very high and in­ves­ti­ga­tors are work­ing to take these per­sons be­fore the court,” Ja­cob said.

Giv­en the fact that they have a se­ri­ous prob­lem with vi­o­lent crimes in T&T, Ja­cob said it was the rea­son why the TTPS had es­tab­lished its bal­lis­tic cen­tre to deal with the sci­en­tif­ic as­pect of crime-fight­ing.

He added that they are now go­ing to al­low the train­ing of three po­lice of­fi­cers who are so qual­i­fied to be trained in DNA mat­ters.

“So that the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre can be boost­ed to help us in the de­tec­tion rate,” Ja­cob said.

Asked if it eco­nom­ic pres­sures were a causal fac­tor in the in­crease of vi­o­lent crimes, Ja­cob replied: “That is why we would need the in­sti­tu­tions to do the stud­ies and to look at it. We can’t just spec­u­late and say it’s be­cause of eco­nom­ics and what­so­ev­er.”

Ja­cob said that be­sides work­ing to get il­le­gal and lethal weapons off the streets, they are in need of oth­er sup­port in con­flict res­o­lu­tion.

“The pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal firearms is cre­at­ing a se­ri­ous prob­lem and in spite of 230 firearms we would have re­cov­ered, we need the oth­er sup­port of con­flict res­o­lu­tion to bring in our coun­try so that per­sons will have oth­er mea­sures to re­solve is­sues,” Ja­cob said.

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