Gail Alexan­der

An analy­sis of vi­o­lent crime in T&T promi­nent­ly high­lights that youths—aged 15 to 29—are the coun­try’s crime vic­tims and al­so the main of­fend­ers of vi­o­lent crime, says Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

The CoP gave the in­for­ma­tion dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion on T&T’s ex­pe­ri­ence with vi­o­lence at yes­ter­day’s Cari­com crime sym­po­sium, ti­tled Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue – the Crime Chal­lenge, at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port- of-Spain.

Po­lice rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Ba­hamas and oth­er is­lands al­so gave their per­spec­tives.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said, “In T&T vi­o­lent, es­pe­cial­ly, gun-re­lat­ed homi­cides, have been in­creas­ing at a phe­nom­e­nal rate, peak­ing at 605 in 2022. This prob­lem is as­so­ci­at­ed with guns, gangs and drugs.”

She said in T&T, vi­o­lent crimes have ac­count­ed for a large per­cent­age of all re­port­ed se­ri­ous crimes.

“This pat­tern has con­tin­ued and in 2022, with 12, 578 se­ri­ous crimes, vi­o­lent crimes ac­count­ed for 38 per cent of those.”

Da­ta al­so high­light­ed that 72 per cent of the vic­tims of se­ri­ous crimes were, in fact, vic­tims of vi­o­lent crimes.

“In analy­sis of the crime sta­tis­tics, what is very re­veal­ing is that a very high per­cent­age of the vic­tims of vi­o­lence are peo­ple aged 15 to 29,” the CoP said.

The Unit­ed Na­tions de­fines youths as those 15-24 years. Hare­wood-Christo­pher said for the con­ve­nience in ad­dress­ing vi­o­lence in T&T, the de­f­i­n­i­tion of 15 to 29 years was adopt­ed.

“The analy­sis al­so bold­ly points out the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact that firearms use has on our youths through firearm vi­o­lence. An analy­sis of vi­o­lent crime in T&T shows the youth vi­o­lence in 2013 ac­count­ed for 41.36 per cent of all the vic­tims of vi­o­lent crimes. This per­cent­age has var­ied over the years - 2013 to 2022- with 33 per cent record­ed in 2022,” she said.

“The analy­sis promi­nent­ly high­lights our youth as the vic­tims of crime and I dare­say al­so, as the of­fend­ers in vi­o­lent crimes.”

She said the 2013 fig­ure shows that 60.7 per cent of vi­o­lent crime of­fend­ers were youth of­fend­ers “and the high rate of youth of­fend­ing is shown over 2013-22.”

“For in­stance, vi­o­lent crime of­fend­ers in 2017 - some 54.5 per cent, were youth of­fend­ers and in 2022, some 54.6 per cent were youth of­fend­ers.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the con­sis­tent high lev­el of vi­o­lence “needs a dif­fer­ent ap­proach in ad­dress­ing it.”

“And I sub­mit the very use­ful ap­proach to adopt is the pub­lic health ap­proach.”

This, she said, in­volves a) defin­ing and mon­i­tor­ing the prob­lems, (b) iden­ti­fy­ing risk fac­tors and pro­tec­tive fac­tors, (c) de­vel­op­ing and test­ing pre­ven­tion strate­gies, and (d,) en­sur­ing wide­spread im­ple­men­ta­tion of ef­fec­tive strate­gies.

She said this ap­proach al­lows polic­ing to ben­e­fit from what works for pub­lic health.

The CoP said in ad­dress­ing vi­o­lent crimes, es­pe­cial­ly as they af­fect youths, there are many risk fac­tors to con­sid­er and most promi­nent is the lack of so­cial con­trol from the in­sti­tu­tions of such con­trol - the home, school, church, com­mu­ni­ty and po­lice.

“If these in­sti­tu­tions are work­ing ef­fec­tive­ly, there will be re­duc­tion in the lev­els of vi­o­lence in our coun­try,” she added.

She said some oth­er risk fac­tors are bul­ly­ing, un­em­ploy­ment, ex­po­sure to gang ac­tiv­i­ties, in­volve­ment in drugs and ac­cess to il­le­gal firearms. Counter mea­sures to risk fac­tors in­clude op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­duc­tive en­gage­ment pro­vid­ed by ed­u­ca­tion, sports, com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and char­i­ta­ble or so­cial work.

“In T&T, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has in­cor­po­rat­ed the pro­tec­tive fac­tors through nu­mer­ous in­ter­ven­tions to pre­vent vi­o­lence and crime gen­er­al­ly. These in­ter­ven­tions are de­liv­ered via the TTPS youth clubs, Hearts and Minds pro­gramme, the US Em­bassy-spon­sored Project Grace (on gang re­duc­tion), school in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty fo­cused ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the TTPS Po­lice Youth Clubs have gen­er­at­ed “phe­nom­e­nal re­sults,” pro­duc­ing many youths who are mod­el adults to­day in pro­fes­sions rang­ing from med­i­cine and se­cu­ri­ty sec­tors, to ed­u­ca­tion, avi­a­tion and “even a serv­ing Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter.”

Cari­com’s prob­lems—guns and gangs

That’s the sto­ry in oth­er Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries apart from T&T, ac­cord­ing to some Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers who spoke af­ter T&T CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher at yes­ter­day’s Cari­com crime sym­po­sium in Port-of-Spain.

The Ba­hamas’ CoP, Clay­ton Fer­nan­der, a 40-year vet­er­an, said the sym­po­sium was very time­ly based on what’s be­ing seen in the re­gion now. He not­ed that crime in Ba­hamas in­cludes hu­man smug­gling, il­le­gal traf­fick­ing of weapons and drugs, gang vi­o­lence due to turf wars, re­tal­i­a­tion and gang re­cruit­ment at high schools.

He gave sta­tis­tics:

Vic­tims and sus­pects - 18 to 25 years

Weapon of choice in the Ba­hamas - high-pow­ered ri­fle

Vi­o­lent crimes for 2022 - to­tal 128 mur­ders com­pared to 119 in 2021. Twen­ty-eight of the 128 solved

So far for 2023, 35 for first quar­ter, a de­crease with 2022.

Armed rob­beries in­creased in 2022 - to 555; all male sus­pects.

370 il­le­gal guns re­moved from streets in 2022

100 guns re­moved for first three months of 2023, con­firm­ing the “streets are flood­ed with il­le­gal weapons.”

Two-week turn­around time for courts’ han­dling of firearms mat­ters

Thou­sands of con­tain­ers move dai­ly though the Ba­hamas, which lacks ma­chines to check every one.

Peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed who brought guns through couri­ers.

Ja­maica’s Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, ma­jor gen­er­al An­tho­ny An­der­son, ex­am­ined Ja­maica’s polic­ing re­spons­es. He not­ed Ja­maica’s mur­der rate of 52.9 per 100,000. He said homi­cides were sig­nif­i­cant.

“We crossed 1,000 peo­ple killed in 1997 and un­bro­ken since 2003, to date we’re over that lev­el.”

An­der­son said in re­cent times, Ja­maica’s seen a shift from guns that are high­ly con­trolled by crim­i­nal gangs to “de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion” of gun own­er­ships. This flowed from il­le­gal mon­ey which youths use.

He said all of a sud­den, rather than gangs con­trol­ling firearms, youths in this are us­ing their mon­ey to buy guns and that’s play­ing out with ri­val­ries in the streets, with drugs als still be­ing a big is­sue in Ja­maica.

All the CoPs showed charts and pic­tures of is­sues in their is­lands.