DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is cau­tion­ing the pub­lic against lay­ing blame at the feet of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for the rise in mur­ders which has raised con­cerns for many law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

Re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al Carl Al­fon­so de­fend­ed the top cop in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, not­ing that she can­not com­bat crime on her own.

“The com­mis­sion­er alone can’t do any­thing, and we know that. It is un­fair to tar­get her. Yes, she is re­spon­si­ble for the Po­lice Ser­vice, but she’s not re­spon­si­ble for all the crime that goes on,” he said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher host­ed a news con­fer­ence last week in which she tout­ed the suc­cess of the Po­lice Ser­vice’s crime-fight­ing strate­gies. At the time, the coun­try was one mur­der shy of last year’s fig­ure. Since then, two more mur­ders pushed the toll to 386 when com­pared to last year’s 385 with few­er than four months to go.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher promised to re­duce mur­ders by June af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed to of­fice ear­li­er this year. How­ev­er, she failed to make this goal.

De­spite this, the re­tired Brigadier com­ment­ed on whether a State of Emer­gency (SoE), which was im­posed by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­fore his tenure as min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, would re­duce se­ri­ous crimes.

While it was Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s method to tar­get crim­i­nals, Al­fon­so said he does not sup­port it now.

“That has to be a last re­sort. It has to be the re­sort af­ter the last re­sort. I don’t think lock­ing down the coun­try is go­ing to put any se­ri­ous dent in the crime sit­u­a­tion. It may pause it for a while, maybe, but I don’t think it’s go­ing to erad­i­cate all the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties that’s tak­ing place,” he said.

Mean­while, a re­tired se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said it is pos­si­ble for the coun­try to record a rise in mur­ders de­spite a re­duc­tion in shoot­ings and wound­ings as an­nounced by the top cop.

The of­fi­cer, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said there may be an in­crease in dou­ble or triple mur­ders in one in­ci­dent which could in­flu­ence the sta­tis­tics. How­ev­er, he said the TTPS should pro­vide the da­ta nec­es­sary for the pub­lic to un­der­stand this trend.

He added that the rise in mur­ders ought to be at­trib­uted to the nar­cotics trade as this coun­try has be­come a tran­sit point for drugs from North Amer­i­ca to Eu­rope.

The for­mer law­man said drugs are now ac­com­pa­nied by guns, for which there is an in­creased de­mand in T&T.