A day af­ter the mur­der of 34-year-old Trevor Williams out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad is ad­vis­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that his re­cent ap­peal to the po­lice to make crim­i­nals “un­com­fort­able” through more ag­gres­sive tac­tics will be in­ef­fec­tive with­out the nec­es­sary re­sources.

Row­ley made his call in a Face­book post via the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter on De­cem­ber 27, just a day be­fore Williams was gunned down. At the time, the Prime Min­is­ter ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the coun­try’s grim mile­stone of over 600-plus mur­ders, not­ing that de­spite the best ef­forts of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­out fear of de­tec­tion or the cer­tain­ty of time­ly pun­ish­ment.

“If I am to make some spe­cial ap­peals they are to the po­lice, that they make the crim­i­nals un­com­fort­able with pen­e­trat­ing de­tec­tion meth­ods,” Row­ley said, pledg­ing full sup­port to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies.

How­ev­er, in less than 24 hours, Williams was shot dead out­side the po­lice sta­tion while ac­com­pa­ny­ing Calvin Lee, al­so known as “Tyson” or “Dan 6,” who had gone to the sta­tion to sign the bail book. Lee, who had been charged ear­li­er this year with firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences, and was de­scribed by po­lice as a “re­put­ed gang leader”, sur­vived the at­tack.

Seep­er­sad, com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent, lament­ed, what he said was a short­age of es­sen­tial re­sources with­in the TTPS, in­clud­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and staffing lim­i­ta­tions. He stressed that ad­dress­ing these gaps re­quires a sys­temic re­sponse from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“It’s one thing to tell the po­lice to im­prove de­tec­tion rates, but with­out the right tools and re­sources, you’re re­al­ly spin­ning top in mud. In the long run, it could end up mak­ing the po­lice ser­vice look bad,” he em­pha­sised. “You don’t just leave it as is with an in­ad­e­quate num­ber of homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors, with­out the right tools, and with­out the lev­el of time­ly sup­port that is need­ed from the foren­sic sci­ence cen­tre and oth­er an­cil­lary ser­vices.”

Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed that Gov­ern­ment con­duct an au­dit to iden­ti­fy the gaps with­in the TTPS, start­ing with the most press­ing is­sues.

For­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so shared sim­i­lar con­cerns, ac­cus­ing Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley of hypocrisy. He sug­gest­ed that Row­ley had un­der­mined the very strate­gies that he (Grif­fith) had put in place to con­trol crime.

“It is rather hyp­o­crit­i­cal and com­i­cal at the same time. What you would have seen re­cent­ly in Besson Street, that now it is hit­ting home be­cause, where­as be­fore we were go­ing in­to the hotspot ar­eas led by my­self—lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple—not wear­ing a cane and hold­ing a cane and a gabar­dine and say­ing nurs­ery rhymes and ask­ing peo­ple to pray... That (CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher) is who Kei­th Row­ley wants now and that is why the crim­i­nals are not un­com­fort­able. Now, the crim­i­nals are go­ing right up in the face of the po­lice of­fi­cers, which ob­vi­ous­ly is a se­ri­ous in­di­ca­tion that they in­tend to tell the law en­force­ment agen­cies ‘we are in con­trol’.”

Grif­fith al­so claimed that a lack of re­sources is ex­ac­er­bat­ing the prob­lem.

“The po­lice are not get­ting the re­sources, they are not get­ting the sup­port, they are not get­ting the tac­ti­cal lead­er­ship that is re­quired and strate­gic lead­er­ship. So, it is quick­sand.”

Just days ear­li­er, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher had al­so ex­pressed her dis­ap­point­ment over the record-set­ting homi­cide rate, which stood at 615, yes­ter­day.