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Sunday, February 16, 2025

CoP targets reduction in murders by June

by

Jesse Ramdeo
719 days ago
20230227
Police Commissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher, right, responds to a question during yesterday’s Joint Select Committee on National Security in the Linda Baboolal Conference Room of the Parliament Building in Port-of-Spain yesterday. Listening at left is Senior Supt Homicide Rishi Singh and ACP North West Collis Hazel.

Police Commissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher, right, responds to a question during yesterday’s Joint Select Committee on National Security in the Linda Baboolal Conference Room of the Parliament Building in Port-of-Spain yesterday. Listening at left is Senior Supt Homicide Rishi Singh and ACP North West Collis Hazel.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

With Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mur­der rate spi­ralling once again fol­low­ing a bloody start to 2023 in which over 100 peo­ple have al­ready met their demise, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is promis­ing an end to the blood­let­ting.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher made the com­ment dur­ing the sec­ond ses­sion of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee called to gain an un­der­stand­ing of the an­ti-crime strate­gies be­ing utilised by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dur­ing the ses­sion, JSC mem­ber Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al ques­tioned, “What sort of time­line do you have in mind for these strate­gies to start pro­duc­ing re­sults, be­cause at the rate we go­ing, if we con­tin­ue along that tra­jec­to­ry, we could be look­ing at maybe a thou­sand.”

How­ev­er, the top cop said by the next three months, there could be some pos­i­tive out­come.

“We will ex­pect to see a change in the mur­der rate short-term by June and long-term by De­cem­ber,” Hare­wood-Christo­pher told the JSC.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ap­pear­ance was her first since be­com­ing Com­mis­sion­er and came weeks af­ter she was crit­i­cised by JSC mem­bers for her no-show at the first ses­sion.

Dur­ing the ses­sion, she took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to apol­o­gise for her ab­sence then.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate the dis­ap­point­ment that was caused by my ab­sence and I am here to­day and I hope to present my­self well,” she said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said among the ar­eas to be ze­roed in on to re­duce the crime rate was gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

She as­sured that in push­ing back gang ac­tiv­i­ties, every ef­fort will be made to achieve a re­duc­tion in mur­ders by June.

“We’re go­ing to con­duct ex­ten­sive da­ta min­ing on gangs, in­clud­ing seizure, lo­ca­tions, crim­i­nal modus operan­di and pro­fil­ing of mem­bers and as­so­ciates. We’re go­ing to be tar­get­ing the pro­lif­ic of­fend­ers, the gang mem­bers with out­stand­ing war­rants, the drug deal­ers and oth­er no­to­ri­ous per­sons,” she said.

JSC mem­ber Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy asked the CoP whether or not she thought there were weak­ness­es with state agen­cies that may be like­ly to fa­cil­i­tate the preva­lence of il­le­gal firearms.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty had been on­go­ing to en­sure a mea­sure of con­trol.

How­ev­er, act­ing DCP of In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Curt Si­mon added that cer­tain state agen­cies were on the TTPS’ radar.

“Il­le­gal firearms, of course, is a con­cern for us. Some of our biggest hauls would have come through the ports and even our air­ports, that would sug­gest that per­sons who are as­so­ci­at­ed with these agen­cies may be com­plic­it some­what in as­sist­ing law­break­ers, so we call them fa­cil­i­ta­tors and in em­bark­ing on our in­ves­ti­ga­tions in that arrange­ment, be­cause we have launched a probe in­to that flow, that in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volves our friends from the US Em­bassy, the ATF and even the FBI and drug en­force­ment peo­ple.”

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er said TTPS of­fi­cials were in the process of re­vis­ing the vi­o­lent crime re­duc­tion strate­gies and it will be made avail­able in the com­ing weeks.

“What I’ll be fo­cus­ing on is pre­ci­sion polic­ing us­ing in­tel­li­gence, pre­ven­tion, pro-ac­tion and pros­e­cu­tion. When I say pre­ci­sion polic­ing, it is polic­ing of the few per­sons re­spon­si­ble for the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. I’d be fo­cus­ing on dis­man­tling gangs, the seiz­ing of firearms, erad­i­ca­tion of drug blocks, in­creas­ing the fo­cus on transna­tion­al crime, av­er­ag­ing the avail­able tech­nol­o­gy to en­hance po­lice op­er­a­tions, en­hanc­ing po­lice in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ty, build­ing po­lice le­git­i­ma­cy, in­creas­ing po­lice pres­ence, im­prov­ing move­ment on road­ways, in­creas­ing de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of vi­o­lent of­fend­ers, im­prov­ing man­age­ment of po­lice op­er­a­tions and a ze­ro tol­er­ance on po­lice ill-dis­ci­pline and cor­rup­tion.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the TTPS al­so planned to ac­quire 400 more body cam­eras over the next three months for of­fi­cers to use in the field.

Mean­while, al­so ad­dress­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty, act­ing DCP Si­mon said pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures sug­gest­ed there were 104 gangs op­er­at­ing across the coun­try.

“We have ex­tend­ed our gang units and our abil­i­ty to col­late and re­ceive this in­tel by in­cor­po­rat­ing func­tion­ing gang units with the SIU and now you find us set­ting up dig­i­tal plat­forms for this con­nec­tiv­i­ty to be reached be­tween the di­vi­sion­al gang units and our main SIU unit, which is un­der the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau.

‘We ex­pect the of­fi­cers, when prop­er­ly trained, would be able to deal with, in a much more de­ci­sive way, gangs in their dis­tricts.”

He al­so said the theft of near­ly 6,000 ve­hi­cles be­tween 2017 and 2022 had prompt­ed the TTPS to widen its ap­proach to deal­ing with the mat­ter. He said giv­en that just over 1,300 ve­hi­cles have since been re­cov­ered, there was cause for con­cern, adding in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to what can be con­sid­ered an il­le­gal busi­ness ring are on­go­ing.

“What we are do­ing now is very promis­ing and the po­ten­tial is to ac­tu­al­ly shut down the whole busi­ness mod­el of the lar­ce­ny mo­tor ve­hi­cle en­ter­prise and we are em­ploy­ing a num­ber of tools. More par­tic­u­lar­ly, we have brought in our Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau in­to the set, so there is a com­bi­na­tion of in­ves­ti­ga­tors and agen­cies.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher as­sured the JSC mem­bers po­lice of­fi­cers had the ca­pac­i­ty and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of achiev­ing all its man­dates.


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