Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

One year ago, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) swept in­to of­fice with a promise that in six months from the date Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sworn in (May 1, 2025), Trinidad and To­ba­go will be a safer place.

To­day, as the ad­min­is­tra­tion pre­pares to cel­e­brate its one-year an­niver­sary, that promise is be­ing mea­sured by the num­ber of lives lost over the last year ver­sus the fre­quen­cy of States of Emer­gency (SoE) procla­ma­tions.

From the get-go, the new UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion set out to dis­tance it­self from the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-led na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mod­el.

In one of her first ma­jor struc­tur­al moves, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­man­tled the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, split­ting its man­date in­to two: the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty un­der for­mer Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der and the Min­istry of De­fence un­der crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge.

But, un­der the lead­er­ship of Alexan­der, a po­lice of­fi­cer well known to the pub­lic, cit­i­zens and crit­ics are ques­tion­ing if a min­istry’s name change and a ma­jor ca­reer shift is ac­tu­al­ly mak­ing T&T safer.

In the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion’s first 100 days in of­fice, T&T al­so got a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

Though he was large­ly un­known to the pub­lic and even to some with­in the TTPS pri­or to the rev­e­la­tion of the mer­it list, then act­ing Snr Supt Gue­var­ro, who spent most of his ca­reer as­signed to the Spe­cial Branch, sur­passed oth­er can­di­dates for the top cop spot, in­clud­ing his then boss act­ing CoP Ju­nior Ben­jamin.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Gue­var­ro for a re­sponse to the crime rate un­der his watch, but he did not re­spond up to press time.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sought of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics from the TTPS on mur­ders, kid­nap­pings, home in­va­sions, fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings and rob­beries with vi­o­lence from April 29, 2025, to present, but no re­sponse has been re­ceived de­spite wait­ing for over a week.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s records based on pre­vi­ous TTPS mur­der toll stats pro­vid­ed, the mur­der count from April 29, 2025, to present is 336 (as of April 14). For the same pe­ri­od un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, that fig­ure was more than 500.

For the cal­en­dar year, da­ta pro­vid­ed by the TTPS yes­ter­day shows there were 120 mur­ders in 2025, com­pared to 110 over the same pe­ri­od in 2026.

As of yes­ter­day, the com­par­a­tive month­ly to­tal for April stood at 22 in both years.

While the Gov­ern­ment prais­es the sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in crime un­der its watch, most of those mur­ders oc­curred un­der an SoE.

Some of the crimes which al­so shook the na­tion with­in the last year in­clude the Jan­u­ary 20 fa­tal po­lice in­volved shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo.

CCTV footage cap­tured Sama­roo sur­ren­der­ing, yet he was shot dead.

On March 31, an 11-month-old ba­by and his 25-year-old fa­ther were killed while asleep in their St James home af­ter a gun­man stuck a gun and shot them through the bed­room win­dow be­fore flee­ing.

No one has been ar­rest­ed to date.

In a trag­ic se­cu­ri­ty breach at the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion on April 19, WPC Anusha Ever­s­ley was killed dur­ing a brazen raid in which 63 firearms and thou­sands of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion were stolen from the fa­cil­i­ty.

On March 13, the com­mu­ni­ty of San­gre Grande was left in shock af­ter busi­ness­man and al­leged il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tor Dan­ny Guer­ra was gunned down in broad day­light.

Guer­ra was de­tained un­der the last SoE for hav­ing ac­cess to a cache of high-pow­ered firearms.

His Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) al­so stat­ed that he and oth­ers in­tend­ed to im­mi­nent­ly ex­e­cute the as­sas­si­na­tion of a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and to es­ca­late at­tacks against ri­val gangs in pub­lic spaces us­ing high-pow­ered firearms.

That Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter was al­leged to be Sturge. Guer­ra was al­so ac­cused of be­ing a fi­nancier of Sturge. Both al­le­ga­tions have nev­er been ad­mit­ted by Min­is­ter Sturge.

On Ju­ly 18, 2025, the first SoE was de­clared.

At the time, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate was or­ches­trat­ing tar­get­ed at­tacks and plot­ting as­sas­si­na­tions of se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Af­ter its ini­tial 15 days, Par­lia­ment ex­tend­ed it for three months.

It was fur­ther ex­tend­ed in Oc­to­ber and end­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

Ex­act­ly 30 days af­ter the first SoE end­ed, an­oth­er SoE was de­clared on March 3.

This time, Je­re­mie blamed a surge in vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ty or­ches­trat­ed by gang mem­bers from in­side the na­tion’s prison.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had no al­ter­na­tive but to take “de­ci­sive ac­tion” to de­clare an­oth­er SoE.

To date, per­sons of in­ter­est de­tained in­clude po­lice and prison of­fi­cers.

Be­tween these procla­ma­tions, the Gov­ern­ment failed to pass a Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill 2026.

Un­like the SoE, the Gov­ern­ment said this bill would have al­lowed the Prime Min­is­ter to de­clare spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties as “hot spots” be­cause of its high crime, em­pow­er­ing joint pol­i­cy-mil­i­tary forces to man­ag­ing se­cu­ri­ty in these ar­eas for up to 180 days, in­clud­ing ar­rests with­out war­rants.

The Op­po­si­tion con­demned the bill as dra­con­ian and an SoE by an­oth­er name.

It failed to be passed in the Sen­ate on Jan­u­ary 27, with eight of nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ing against it.

It’s now been weeks since the sec­ond SoE was de­clared, yet many cit­i­zens claim it isn’t ef­fec­tive.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, the fear of crime was pal­pa­ble.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the Ch­agua­nas Main Road re­cent­ly, food ven­dor John­ny Fer­nan­do said, “Any time in a State of Emer­gency when you see mur­ders tak­ing place open­ly and in the day­light, you know you’re def­i­nite­ly not safe. It’s scary for any­body to walk out of their house or even to stay in your home now, even in a SoE.”

Fer­nan­do added, “Things feel­ing re­al­ly scary. It’s scary be­cause we’re not get­ting enough in­for­ma­tion as to what’s tak­ing place. De­ci­sions are just be­ing made, and we don’t un­der­stand why and it’s not lead­ing to any­thing pos­i­tive.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Op­po­si­tion leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is among sev­er­al crit­ics who have ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to pro­duce a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan for its en­tire first year in of­fice.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia be­fore en­ter­ing the Par­lia­ment, Beck­les said, “If you are get­ting to the stage where an 11-month-old child is be­ing killed and even re­cent­ly again in Ari­ma, where a fa­ther and an­oth­er child were in­jured, we can’t feel safer. We did not sup­port the last ex­ten­sion of the SoE, and we said why, and our po­si­tion is this: you must have a crime plan. The SoE can­not be your crime plan... And we have to be con­scious that if more than 50,000 are on the bread­line, it’s al­so a so­cial is­sue. So, it’s not just a ques­tion of crime and crime. What are you do­ing for the peo­ple who you promised that when UNC win, those peo­ple will win.”

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Kei­th Scot­land, isn’t of the view that T&T is safer one year af­ter the PNM was de­feat­ed ei­ther.

Scot­land said, “No, I do not feel that the coun­try is safer, and as I said be­fore, that is a corol­lary of this Gov­ern­ment not hav­ing a prop­er plan to re­duce crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

For­mer min­is­ter and po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith dou­bled down, ac­cus­ing Alexan­der of squan­der­ing his first year in of­fice with­out pro­duc­ing a sin­gle new strat­e­gy for a port­fo­lio Grif­fith claims he once led with far more in­no­va­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at his Wood­brook of­fice, Grif­fith said, “It’s a year now, not one new unit, not one new pol­i­cy, not one new sys­tem, not one new pro­gramme, not one new piece of tech­nol­o­gy and it’s not the wheel that needs to be rein­vent­ed.”

More than just a lack of new ideas, Grif­fith al­so ac­cused Alexan­der of re­ject­ing ad­vice or help from oth­ers.

Grif­fith added, “You’re not go­ing to im­prove by block­ing per­sons on What­sApp, and when peo­ple try­ing to give you ad­vice, you feel that your way of try­ing to deal with the me­dia is to be com­ing with all these lit­tle one-lin­ers that con­fuse the life out of every sin­gle per­son, that is not the way.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that be­ing a pol­i­cy­mak­er is new for Alexan­der, Grif­fith says af­ter a year, it’s high time he starts act­ing his role as min­is­ter.

Grif­fith said, “He needs to sit back, a year has passed, he has four more years to go if he re­mains in that po­si­tion, you can’t be do­ing the same thing and ex­pect dif­fer­ent re­sults. He needs to change his mind­set. He needs to step up and un­der­stand his po­si­tion.”

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia caught up with Alexan­der out­side Par­lia­ment to ad­dress the crit­i­cism that he has no crime plan, he replied, “Re­al­ly?”

Mul­ti­ple at­tempts to se­cure a sit-down in­ter­view to dis­cuss the min­is­ter’s first year in of­fice over the last week have gone unan­swered.

While there’s been much push­back on the do­mes­tic front, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first year back in of­fice can al­so be de­fined by her choice to look be­yond the na­tion’s bor­ders for so­lu­tions.

Last month, Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tend­ed the Shields of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit in Do­ral, Flori­da, where she met with Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to dis­cuss re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and of­fi­cial­ly joined the Trump-led Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion on March 7.

The coali­tion is a 17-na­tion mil­i­tary and law en­force­ment al­liance led by the US to erad­i­cate drug car­tels us­ing mil­i­tary force.

Though she was in­tense­ly scru­ti­nised by the Op­po­si­tion over T&T’s new align­ment with the US, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed her move in Par­lia­ment ar­gu­ing that lo­cal gangs are the “re­tail end” of glob­al car­tels mov­ing drugs and firearms through T&T’s wa­ters.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, un­der Sturge’s watch, T&T al­so saw a lot of un­ex­plained US mil­i­tary co­op­er­a­tion in­clud­ing the pres­ence of US mil­i­tary per­son­nel and a US mil­i­tary radar in Crown Point, To­ba­go.

While the sud­den pres­ence of a mil­i­tary radar in To­ba­go re­ceived ma­jor pub­lic push­back, Sturge said it was a nec­es­sary crutch for the Coast Guard.

Apart from this hard-pow­er se­cu­ri­ty ap­proach­es, Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad told Guardian Me­dia the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry has been hav­ing con­sis­tent stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions fo­cused on at-risk youths, bridg­ing the gap be­tween aca­d­e­mics and op­er­a­tional polic­ing.

Dr Seep­er­sad said, “That par­tic­u­lar meet­ing was geared to­wards di­ag­nos­ing the youth crime prob­lem and cre­at­ing a sys­tem, or at least start­ing the process of cre­at­ing a bet­ter co­or­di­nat­ed sys­tem among youth-serv­ing agen­cies so that the ser­vices could be pro­vid­ed to at-risk youths to re­duce their like­li­hood of en­gage­ment in crime… Things are go­ing for­ward and at al­most a break­neck pace, if I might say so, this is the first time in my 15 or so years as a crim­i­nol­o­gist at UWI that I’ve seen this lev­el of en­gage­ment and ded­i­ca­tion of any gov­ern­ment push­ing a crime agen­da for­ward.”

He ex­plained that while the pub­lic sees the hard pow­er of the SoE, those be­hind-the-scenes talks are build­ing the ac­tu­al in­fra­struc­ture for a long-term crime plan.