Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville

@guardian.co.tt

ACP Richard Smith of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion is urg­ing pa­trons of up­com­ing Car­ni­val fetes not to over-in­dulge in al­co­hol for this year’s fes­tiv­i­ties.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Smith, who is al­so the Sil­ver Com­man­der for Car­ni­val 2026, said that while the po­lice would be ac­ti­vat­ed to max­imise se­cu­ri­ty cov­er­age, the pub­lic should al­so ex­er­cise cau­tion when at­tend­ing events.

He said that while pa­trons may want to get val­ue for mon­ey and make the most of the fete ex­pe­ri­ence, they should drink re­spon­si­bly and know their lim­its when in­dulging in al­co­hol.

“You could nev­er drink out $3,000 in an all-in­clu­sive fete. If you try, you’ll die try­ing or you will kill oth­er peo­ple try­ing to do that, so I’m just ask­ing peo­ple to let good sense pre­vail when they’re go­ing to fetes for Car­ni­val. You can nev­er eat and drink out that, so don’t even try to do it.”

Smith al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the po­lice would be stag­ing ex­er­cis­es through­out the Car­ni­val sea­son and warned them to avoid dri­ving while in­tox­i­cat­ed, as they would be putting their lives and the lives of oth­ers in dan­ger.

When asked to com­ment on this coun­try’s mur­der toll, which stood at eight as of yes­ter­day morn­ing com­pared to four for the same pe­ri­od in 2025, Smith said the loss of any life was un­for­tu­nate, as he urged the pub­lic to con­tin­ue part­ner­ing with the po­lice to fight crime.

He al­so ap­pealed to the pub­lic not to re­sort to vi­o­lence, as there were oth­er means of re­solv­ing their is­sues.

“If we have peo­ple that you know are in­tent on com­mit­ting these kinds of of­fences, please alert us so that we can put some­thing in place to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing.

“Eight (mur­ders) at this stage is too much... in fact, one is too much, but we know we’re deal­ing with hu­man na­ture and peo­ple who don’t care about an­oth­er’s life.

“I want to ap­peal to these peo­ple to take a step back and con­sid­er what you’re do­ing.”