Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While he is pleased with a no­tice­able slow­down in the mur­der rate for 2025, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) in charge of Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin says more work is un­der­way in achiev­ing crime-fight­ing goals, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­mains in ef­fect. 

As of Jan­u­ary 7, there have been on­ly three mur­ders, com­pared to the same cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2024 when 16 mur­ders were record­ed. 

Ben­jamin cred­it­ed the drop in mur­ders to a height­ened po­lice pres­ence and more fo­cused po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties aimed at crime sup­pres­sion. He said that for the year thus far, 21 guns and sev­er­al caches of am­mu­ni­tion were seized, not­ing that in ad­di­tion to op­er­a­tional strate­gies, the TTPS were al­so us­ing the state of emer­gency to fos­ter stronger ties with the com­mu­ni­ties they serve. 

De­spite these suc­cess­es, how­ev­er, Ben­jamin said any mur­der was un­ac­cept­able.

“We are pleased with the suc­cess, but we are still not com­fort­able be­cause we are say­ing that every mur­der is one too many, so even with the rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of homi­cides, we are still work­ing to in­ten­si­fy our ac­tiv­i­ties and fo­cus­ing on ar­eas to re­duce the mur­ders. 

“We al­so will be fo­cus­ing on heav­i­ly re­ly­ing on in­tel­li­gence to dis­man­tle and dis­rupt the ac­tiv­i­ties of gangs who pose a threat to the na­tion.” Ben­jamin said while “hard” crime-fight­ing ex­er­cis­es will be a crit­i­cal part of the po­lice strat­e­gy dur­ing the SoE, ef­forts would al­so be made to raise the trust of cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. 

He said these ini­tia­tives would form the ba­sis for con­tin­ued op­er­a­tional suc­cess even af­ter the SoE is dis­con­tin­ued as the po­lice sought to in­crease in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing while build­ing on the trust of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties.

“We will be deal­ing with the root cause of the crime that caused the may­hem last year, and there­fore we have put strate­gies in place to deal with the root cause of those things, and we are ex­pect­ing that once we do those things cor­rect­ly, con­sis­tent­ly we will see a re­duc­tion in crime dur­ing the SoE but al­so af­ter it. 

“We will see a con­tin­ued de­crease over­all, be­cause we took the time to cap­i­talise from the SoE as it re­lates to gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence and vi­o­lent crime in gen­er­al.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on Tues­day, chair­man of the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Hillian More­an was sup­port­ive of the SoE, not­ing that he sup­port­ed any ini­tia­tive aimed at pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens. 

He added that while the re­sponse was un­for­tu­nate, it was nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue pre­serv­ing the peace with the well-be­ing of cit­i­zens in mind. “The vast ma­jor­i­ty of east Port-of-Spain res­i­dents, much like the rest of the na­tion, are pa­tri­ot­ic and law-abid­ing peo­ple who want to see a re­turn and a prop­a­ga­tion of peace and love that east Port-of-Spain is known to ex­ude.

“I’m al­so en­cour­aged by the fact that with the an­nounce­ment that the SoE is ex­pect­ed to run for mul­ti­ple months, that the cit­i­zen­ry can con­tin­ue their usu­al ac­tiv­i­ties while the law en­force­ment agen­cies do their work.”

One of the pro­vi­sions un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2024 is a gun amnesty where any­one who sur­ren­ders a “firearm, am­mu­ni­tion or ex­plo­sive dur­ing any pe­ri­od that is pre­scribed” would not be pros­e­cut­ed un­der the Firearms Act. 

More­an said while some were crit­i­cal of in­tro­duc­ing a gun amnesty, he was op­ti­mistic that per­sons with weapons would do the right thing. 

“I re­mem­ber speak­ing to many at-risk youth about steer­ing clear of guns, drugs and vi­o­lence.

“I can pos­i­tive­ly say that they al­ways ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to do so, so what­ev­er strate­gies that can be used to coun­ter­bal­ance and one day over­pow­er these pow­er­ful neg­a­tive forces, are more than wel­come and should be giv­en sup­port.”

In 2024, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion ac­count­ed for the high­est num­ber of mur­ders of all ten po­lice di­vi­sions, with 91 mur­ders re­port­ed as of De­cem­ber 15.