Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day boast­ed that this year’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions were the safest in re­cent his­to­ry.

Speak­ing at press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’ in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, both ad­mit­ted that it had be­come a cliche as it is fre­quent­ly used at the con­clu­sion of each an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tion. How­ev­er, the sta­tis­tics pre­sent­ed by them ap­peared to prove their most re­cent claim.

They re­vealed that be­tween last Fri­day and Tues­day night, there were 12 se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes across T&T- the low­est for a Car­ni­val week­end since 2014.

Of the crimes, there were two wound­ings with in­tent in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion; two rob­beries and one mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing in the East­ern Di­vi­sion; a rob­bery with vi­o­lence and ma­li­cious dam­age in To­ba­go and two rob­beries, one lar­ce­ny and two wound­ings in Port-of-Spain.

Solid­er Mark St Cyr was mur­dered in Clax­ton Bay on Tues­day night, but his death was not re­lat­ed to Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties. Of the two rob­beries in Port-of-Spain, one was solved as po­lice man­aged to ar­rest a man mo­ments af­ter he tar­get­ed a Unit­ed States (US) cit­i­zen dur­ing J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions.

“It is not just sta­tis­tics that could give the im­pres­sion or per­cep­tion that it was an in­ci­dent-free Car­ni­val but I think we were very suc­cess­ful in our op­er­a­tion,” Grif­fith said.

Gold com­man­der for this year’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) De­o­dat Du­lalchan, sug­gest­ed this may have di­rect­ly con­tributed to a large num­ber of spec­ta­tors and mas­quer­aders, in­clud­ing the over 400,000 peo­ple who con­verged in Port-of-Spain be­tween Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

“I am of the view that be­cause of per­sons’ per­cep­tion of crime and the fact they are feel­ing com­fort­able, that is why we had so much peo­ple on the streets ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing,” Du­lalchan said.

Grif­fith said the en­cour­ag­ing re­sults were the prod­uct of co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween law en­force­ment agen­cies and the use of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy such as CCTV cam­eras and drones to make pre-emp­tive strikes against crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“What that did is en­sure that if we saw some­thing es­ca­lat­ing we were im­me­di­ate­ly able to send a re­sponse to min­imise a sit­u­a­tion that might have been some­thing more se­ri­ous. It was not a case of us turn­ing up to a sit­u­a­tion af­ter it ex­ist­ed,” Grif­fith said.

He al­so com­mend­ed his of­fi­cers for their ef­forts, as he not­ed that the TTPS had be­tween 95 and 98 per cent of its per­son­nel re­port­ing for du­ty over the long week­end. Grif­fith had made a di­rect call for po­lice of­fi­cers to re­port to du­ty af­ter it was re­vealed the TTPS had a 16 per cent ab­sen­teeism rate dur­ing last year’s cel­e­bra­tions.

In terms of vi­o­lent crime, Grif­fith said un­like pre­vi­ous years there was on­ly one mur­der dur­ing the four-day pe­ri­od. He al­so point­ed out that there has been a 16 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders, as there have been 87 for the year as com­pared to 103 for the same pe­ri­od, last year.

“It is very much far from where we want to go. It is not a suc­cess but we are go­ing in the right di­rec­tion,” Grif­fith said.

He al­so claimed homi­cide de­tec­tives were ham­pered by the fact that a large ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders in T&T are gang-re­lat­ed.

“It is very dif­fi­cult for any law en­force­ment agency in the world to deal with gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties and homi­cide, be­cause these take place in sit­u­a­tions and places where there may not be a strong de­gree of polic­ing. You can­not just po­lice an en­tire coun­try,” he said.

Young al­so said he was proud of the re­sults.

“This is not some­thing that we would be sit­ting on our lau­rels or pat­ting our­selves on our back for. Now that Car­ni­val is over the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on the fight against the crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” Young said.

Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes dur­ing Car­ni­val since 2014

Year: Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes

2014: 46

2015: 40

2016: 24

2017: 16

2018: 21

2019: 12