Shane Su­perville 

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt 

On May 13, a me­dia re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s term would be ex­tend­ed for an­oth­er year.

Dur­ing her ap­pear­ance be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC), short­ly af­ter she was ap­point­ed com­mis­sion­er on Feb­ru­ary 3, Hare­wood-Christo­pher pre­dict­ed a short-term re­duc­tion in the mur­der toll by June of that year.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher lat­er ad­mit­ted that the tar­get was not met and that it was meant to in­spire the TTPS.

How­ev­er, the top cop con­tin­ued to face strong crit­i­cism from the Op­po­si­tion, at least one re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer, and the pub­lic over her ap­proach to crime-fight­ing.

For the year thus far, the TTPS has failed to achieve five out of the eight tar­get ob­jec­tives in their vi­o­lent crime re­duc­tion plan. 

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures com­piled for the com­mis­sion­er’s Comp­stat be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and May 13, 2024, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, po­lice are falling be­hind in five cat­e­gories.

Falling be­hind

• While a ten per cent re­duc­tion rate in mur­ders was set as a goal, the po­lice were on­ly able to achieve a sev­en per cent de­crease. As of Fri­day, the mur­der toll stood at 208, com­pared to 225 for the same pe­ri­od last year. Of this fig­ure, on­ly 23 mur­ders have been con­sid­ered solved for the year thus far.

• While the TTPS had hoped for a mur­der de­tec­tion rate of 20 per cent, they on­ly achieved an 11 per cent de­tec­tion rate. 

• The de­tec­tion rate for vi­o­lent crime was al­so well be­low the tar­get of 25 per cent, with on­ly 17 per cent achieved.

• On the is­sue of il­le­gal gun seizures, not on­ly did the TTPS fail to meet the pre­scribed 15 per cent in­crease, but a 28 per cent drop in the num­ber of guns found was re­port­ed.

• Car thefts were al­so a chal­lenge for po­lice, with a 17 per cent in­crease re­port­ed for the year thus far com­pared to the ten per cent re­duc­tion set as a goal.

Im­prove­ments

De­spite these short­com­ings, the re­port al­so out­lined three ar­eas where the TTPS has seen some im­prove­ments.

• These in­clude a 17 per cent drop in vi­o­lent crime, a 19 per cent de­crease in Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes (SRCs), and a 19 per cent de­crease in fa­tal Road Traf­fic Ac­ci­dents (RTAs).

• Some im­prove­ment has been ob­served as an­oth­er re­port analysing da­ta gath­ered be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and April 1 showed at that time on­ly two tar­get ob­jec­tives—re­duc­tions in SRCs and fa­tal RTAs—were met.

Mur­ders par­tic­u­lar­ly 
high in three di­vi­sions

Mur­ders re­main a na­tion­wide con­cern, but da­ta con­tained in the Comp­stat re­port re­vealed that the Port-of-Spain, West­ern and To­ba­go di­vi­sions were ac­tive­ly dri­ving the mur­der toll.

Fig­ures re­port­ed that as of May 13, there were 39 mur­ders in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, com­pared to on­ly 15 for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

One of the more sig­nif­i­cant bursts of vi­o­lence re­port­ed for the year thus far was ob­served in Harpe Place when five men were killed in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing in March.

The mur­ders are be­lieved to be part of on­go­ing war­fare be­tween Sixx and Sev­en gangs. No one was ar­rest­ed or charged for the mur­ders as of Wednes­day evening.

Of the 39 mur­ders in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, on­ly three have been de­tect­ed.

For years, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion has had a rel­a­tive­ly low in­di­vid­ual mur­der toll com­pared to the North­ern, North-Cen­tral and Cen­tral di­vi­sions.

Dur­ing her In­de­pen­dence Day toast to the na­tion last year, Hare­wood-Christo­pher ac­knowl­edged that the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion which cov­ers a sig­nif­i­cant stretch of the east-west Cor­ri­dor was one of the di­vi­sions where an ac­tive in­crease in the mur­der toll was re­port­ed.

One se­nior of­fi­cer said the re­turn of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion as a mur­der “hotbed” was wor­ry­ing as it sig­nalled un­rest in the un­der­world.

“Usu­al­ly when these kinds of mur­ders in­crease in num­bers around the cap­i­tal, which is for want of a bet­ter term, the ‘head­quar­ters’ of these gangs that means big changes are go­ing on.

“It al­so means that there are a lot more in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence to come be­fore things can calm down again. We, the po­lice, do our best, but ul­ti­mate­ly we can’t be every­where at once.”

The of­fi­cer not­ed the brazen na­ture of some killings in the cap­i­tal ear­li­er this year, par­tic­u­lar­ly the mur­der of Akeil Archer who was gunned down at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Jan­u­ary, and the killing of Omar Hunte at the Break­fast Shed days lat­er. Both mur­ders oc­curred in broad day­light.

In the West­ern Di­vi­sion, there have been 23 mur­ders for the year thus far, a marked in­crease from 14 re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

On May 4, gun­men opened fire on a group of limers in Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite, killing four men and wound­ing eight oth­ers. These mur­ders are al­so be­lieved to be caused by on­go­ing gang war­fare.

One source said the uptick in vi­o­lence was be­lieved to be a spillover from the feud in neigh­bour­ing Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion.

In the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, eight mur­ders were re­port­ed as of May 13, com­pared to six for the same pe­ri­od last year.

In the most re­cent killing, Nikeisha Sandy was gunned down at Arnos Vale Road, Ply­mouth. Sandy is the third woman to be killed in To­ba­go in 2024 thus far, be­hind Deb­o­rah Gopaul, whose burnt re­mains were found off the Claude Noel High­way on March 26 and Shel­lon Wal­ters-Joseph whose body was found over a precipice on May 4.

Of the re­main­ing sev­en po­lice di­vi­sions, the North East­ern Di­vi­sion showed the largest drop in mur­ders, with 20 mur­ders be­ing re­port­ed as of May 13, com­pared to 42 mur­ders for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Few­er guns be­ing seized

As of May 13, po­lice have seized 193 guns, com­pared to 267 for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

For the year thus far, pis­tols were the most nu­mer­ous type of gun seized, fol­lowed by re­volvers and ri­fles.

One po­lice source said while the seizure of au­to­mat­ic weapons in San­ta Cruz, Cara­po, and Princes Town in 2023 led to a “short­age” of weapons on the street, it was equal­ly like­ly that smug­glers and crim­i­nal clients have changed their strate­gies in how im­port­ing and hid­ing weapons.

In 2022, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds re­port­ed that there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 il­le­gal guns in T&T.

Then po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob spear­head­ed the be­gin­ning of a gun-re­trieval cam­paign com­bin­ing in­tel­li­gence from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) and for­eign agen­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Al­co­hol To­bac­co and Firearms (ATF) Unit.