Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the re­cent per­cep­tion of a surge in mur­ders re­flects a re­turn to “crim­i­nal nor­mal­i­ty” fol­low­ing the end of the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

A “crim­i­nal nor­mal­i­ty” is a re­turn to the usu­al lev­el of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty that ex­ist­ed be­fore the tem­po­rary sup­pres­sion caused by the SoE.

Gue­var­ro made the state­ment dur­ing an in­ter­view on the Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to con­cerns about a re­cent triple mur­der in Gon­za­les and grow­ing un­ease over an ap­par­ent rise in killings.

As of yes­ter­day, the mur­der toll stood at 211 for the year, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than the 321 record­ed dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year. So far this month, there have been 22 mur­ders, com­pared to 39 for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

“We are com­ing out of the State of Emer­gency. His­tor­i­cal­ly, when you re­call 2011, when we had that State of Emer­gency, as well as 2020 and 2021, when we were al­so un­der a State of Emer­gency, there was a marked re­duc­tion in homi­cides as well as oth­er vi­o­lent crime. The im­me­di­ate ef­fect, as the sta­tis­tics show, is that com­ing out of the State of Emer­gency, there was what some per­sons may term an up­surge,” he said. “We see it as a re­turn to some sort of nor­mal crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

He ex­plained that dur­ing a State of Emer­gency, there is sup­pres­sion of crime, but once it is lift­ed, crime con­tin­ues.

He added, how­ev­er, that he would be very cau­tious in say­ing there was an up­surge or spike. Cer­tain pow­ers are grant­ed to law en­force­ment dur­ing a State of Emer­gency that they do not have with­out one, which con­tributes to crime sup­pres­sion.

The State of Emer­gency was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30 last year and end­ed on April 13, two weeks be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion. It was trig­gered af­ter gun­men at­tempt­ed to kill Calvin “Sixx Dan” Lee out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Dur­ing the at­tack on Lee, Trevor Williams, 34, was killed. The day af­ter, in what po­lice said was a reprisal at­tack, five men were mur­dered: Ryan Lessey, 23, of Priz­gar Lands; Der­ron Cal­liste, 35, of Priz­gar Lands; Cleon Lu­g­in, 37, of Priz­gar Lands; Kam­bon Omowale, 39, of Quintin Trace, Priz­gar Lands; and Gareth Smart, of Thoma­sine Street, Laven­tille.

Po­lice said there were con­cerns about in­creased vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ties, which trig­gered the State to de­clare a State of Emer­gency.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice da­ta, there were 5,092 op­er­a­tions re­sult­ing in 3,926 ar­rests, in­clud­ing 50 peo­ple de­tained un­der the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der.

Over­all, po­lice seized 195 firearms and 4,080 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, along with 1,752.04 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na, 185.95 kg of co­caine, 89.83 grammes of ec­sta­sy, and less than 100 grammes of as­sort­ed drugs in­clud­ing Xanax, MD­MA (mol­ly), and crys­tal metham­phet­a­mines.

Com­ment­ing on the crime see-saw, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo said that while States of Emer­gency work tem­porar­i­ly, she was not ful­ly ap­prised of all the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the sup­posed in­crease and that these need to be de­ter­mined.

“When you’re talk­ing about in­creased crime, you’re not us­ing the same strate­gies. There has been a change of gov­ern­ment. You don’t know what strate­gies or how the strate­gies have changed, what types of tech­niques or pro­to­cols are be­ing used to curb crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, and what types of crime are be­ing tar­get­ed. So, one fac­tor alone can­not ex­plain these things. I think we have to see it on a broad spec­trum to un­der­stand what fac­tors con­tribute to crime.”

She said it was now a wait­ing game to see how Gov­ern­ment rolls out its plan to ad­dress crime fol­low­ing the SoE.

While Gue­var­ro was be­ing in­ter­viewed on CNC3, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der was on CCN’s Morn­ing Edi­tion pro­gramme, promis­ing re­sults in crime re­duc­tion soon.

“I know the pop­u­la­tion is wait­ing and wants to see im­me­di­ate im­pact. But let me not throw blame on any­body. What we met was an in­sti­tu­tion filled with empti­ness, lack of vi­sion and di­rec­tion.

“So now we have to re­con­struct near­ly every in­sti­tu­tion un­der the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. It takes time to do these things. When you think for a mo­ment that you were go­ing to jump in­to an im­me­di­ate fight against crime and cause an im­me­di­ate im­pact, on ar­rival, we met empti­ness.”