Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Even as To­ba­go’s mur­der toll has hit a record high, for­mer act­ing com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice (ACPs) on the is­land be­lieve it is time for po­lice of­fi­cers to take a tougher ap­proach to­wards tack­ling crime.

Frus­trat­ed by the use of in­ef­fec­tive tech­niques on crim­i­nals and delin­quents, the for­mer ACPs are urg­ing cur­rent mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s To­ba­go Di­vi­sion to con­sid­er a sub­stan­tial over­haul of the is­land’s polic­ing strate­gies, stress­ing on the need for tougher crime-fight­ing tac­tics and a stronger re­sponse to the es­ca­lat­ing crime rates.

“The po­lice need to po­lice, and they need to po­lice vig­or­ous­ly and hard. They need to send mes­sages. The on­ly way peo­ple will un­der­stand is when they see ex­am­ples,” for­mer ACP Ans­ley Gar­rick told Guardian Me­dia.

Gar­rick, who served as the head of the To­ba­go di­vi­sion from 2019, shared his in­sights on the cul­tur­al fac­tors that have hin­dered ef­fec­tive polic­ing on the is­land. He not­ed the ten­den­cy for To­ba­go po­lice to hes­i­tate when en­forc­ing the law against To­bag­o­ni­ans be­cause of close con­nec­tions.

“This prob­lem start­ed long time. To­bag­on­ian po­lice don’t go hard on their To­bag­on­ian folk be­cause it may be a fam­i­ly and if you do go hard, you find out its some rel­a­tive of yours,” Gar­rick not­ed.

“That kind of cul­ture caus­es re­al hard crime to start to raise its head. I used to work in nar­cotics as a young po­lice in To­ba­go and you won’t find To­bag­o­ni­ans ar­rest­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans and that cul­ture is a mon­ster that is now ful­ly grown.”

He ar­gued that a stronger and more vig­or­ous re­sponse is nec­es­sary, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of both set­ting ex­am­ples.

“To treat with it, while I ap­plaud the mod­ern way peo­ple go on to deal with it through coun­selling, but some­times there must be hard­line stuff. The youths don’t care so you have to go hard,” he said.

“Look at in schools the type of bul­ly­ing and rage you’re see­ing. If you don’t set ex­am­ples, what you will be do­ing is leav­ing a pow­der­puff to treat with hard sit­u­a­tions. You have to mix it.”

He be­lieves le­nien­cy to­wards crim­i­nals has re­sult­ed in an in­crease in se­ri­ous crime on the is­land but not­ed of­fi­cers have a mis­con­cep­tion of what hard polic­ing is.

“Run­ning out and jump­ing and shoot­ing up in the air is not hard polic­ing. It is not even polic­ing. That is what of­fi­cers feel is polic­ing. They have a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion and mis­con­cep­tion of hard polic­ing, so they grav­i­tate to the soft polic­ing,” he said.

He al­so stressed the need to re­store pro­fes­sion­al­ism with­in the po­lice ser­vice and pro­vide the pub­lic with a sense of se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice.

For for­mer ACP Garfield Moore, the sit­u­a­tion is “sad and fright­en­ing.”

He said, “What is hap­pen­ing is a trend that we have seen not on­ly in Trinidad but al­so in To­ba­go. The young peo­ple have no pa­tience. We have lost this gen­er­a­tion.”

Moore served as head of the To­ba­go di­vi­sion from 2014 to 2016. He em­pha­sised the need for in­ter­ven­tion start­ing at the pri­ma­ry school lev­el, as he be­lieves this gen­er­a­tion has been lost.

“I could re­call some years ago when we had a dou­ble mur­der and we picked up a young fel­la who was from Trinidad. He was around 16 years old and he was say­ing ‘I live my life I could die now’.” Moore said.

“That’s the men­tal­i­ty, that they don’t see life as be­ing im­por­tant and what­so­ev­er hap­pen to them at any stage they are com­fort­able with it.”

For­mer ACP William Nurse, mean­while, said polic­ing had lost its touch, with of­fi­cers now fo­cused on rank rather than im­prov­ing the foun­da­tion­al as­pects of polic­ing.

He re­called that un­der his lead­er­ship—be­tween 2020 to 2022— To­ba­go achieved a 100 per cent solve rate for mur­ders. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed con­fu­sion and dis­ap­point­ment over the cur­rent state of af­fairs, urg­ing the se­nior au­thor­i­ties to fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing their sub­or­di­nates’ skills and knowl­edge.

“I’m not sure whether or not those who are in charge are do­ing enough. I make no apol­o­gy for that. The se­niors need to not fo­cus on their rank but they need to fo­cus on those whom they su­per­vise to bring them up in terms of knowl­edge, skills and that is where we are falling down,” he said.

“We fo­cus too much on rank and not re­al­ly the fu­ture. In­ves­ti­ga­tion is a dy­ing art and this is where we need to fo­cus our at­ten­tion. If we do that, we won’t have so many prob­lems in To­ba­go.”

He added, “To­ba­go is very easy to po­lice. It’s a small is­land state and if we do the ba­sic polic­ing, in­fuse in­tel­li­gence in­to it, good in­for­ma­tion, with ro­bust in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we are on our way to solv­ing all the prob­lems To­ba­go might have.”

In 2022, Nurse had raised an alarm about the preva­lence of gangs in To­ba­go, stat­ing there were 20 gangs on the is­land. While he faced pub­lic crit­i­cism and was called up­on to pro­vide sta­tis­tics to sub­stan­ti­ate his claim, Nurse said he re­mained firm in his be­lief that the gang prob­lem on the is­land was sig­nif­i­cant and need­ed at­ten­tion.

In light of the re­cent hike in mur­ders and in­creased gang vi­o­lence on the is­land, he re­newed his call for in­creased ef­forts to in­fil­trate and neu­tralise gangs, view­ing it as a piv­otal step to­wards ad­dress­ing the root caus­es of crime.

“One of the prob­lems is that we like to bury our heads in the prover­bial sand. And we don’t like to face re­al­i­ty. To­ba­go has a se­ri­ous gang prob­lem and what scares me is that the is­land is so small that any­body is easy to find in To­ba­go,” he said.

For­mer To­ba­go di­vi­sion­al com­man­der, Snr Supt Joanne Archie, who lat­er act­ed as ACP, spoke of the need to strike a bal­ance be­tween soft and hard polic­ing.

Dur­ing her time, most of the mur­ders were linked to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, with some cas­es hav­ing gang con­nec­tions.

Archie, how­ev­er, dis­agreed that the To­ba­go po­lice ap­proach has shift­ed heav­i­ly to­wards a soft polic­ing strat­e­gy.

“We know To­ba­go do have gangs and To­ba­go has had gangs some time now. It isn’t a yes­ter­day prob­lem be­cause of the type of mem­bers of the gang, where they are based in Trinidad, but they now have mem­ber­ship in To­ba­go.”

“The soft polic­ing ap­proach is need­ed. As a mat­ter of fact those are proac­tive mea­sures.

“Crime is not sta­t­ic it’s dy­nam­ic. It changes all the time, so one plan which would have worked, while I was there—which was up to 2016-2018, it may not work now be­cause the dy­nam­ics may have changed.

“While we had, around Christ­mas times, rob­beries be­ing per­pe­trat­ed by peo­ple from Trinidad, we are now see­ing where the vi­o­lent crimes have reached To­ba­go.”