Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

With the end of the year fast ap­proach­ing T&T is on track for a record-break­ing mur­der count sur­pass­ing the 2022 fig­ure of 605, three po­lice di­vi­sions have ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant spikes in mur­ders for 2024.

As of Oc­to­ber 24, there were 78 mur­ders in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion. The fig­ure has been at­trib­uted to an in­ten­si­fied war be­tween Sixx and Sev­en gangs and is no­tice­ably high­er than the 2023 fig­ure of 33 for the same pe­ri­od.

The East­ern Di­vi­sion record­ed the sec­ond-high­est spike in mur­ders for the year with 46, com­pared to 26 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

In that di­vi­sion, vi­o­lent crimes have been trend­ing up­ward since the start of the year with mul­ti­ple mur­ders and wound­ings re­port­ed in Damarie Hill, San­gre Grande, Matu­ra and as far east as To­co. The mur­ders are be­lieved to be a spillover of the Port-of-Spain gang war.

The To­ba­go Di­vi­sion had the third-high­est in­crease in mur­ders with 25 re­port­ed com­pared to nine for the same pe­ri­od last year. Po­lice in the Crim­i­nal Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit at­trib­uted the in­crease to the mi­gra­tion of crim­i­nals from Trinidad, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Mal­oney.

At a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing in Ju­ly, the le­gal of­fi­cer for the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) Za­heer Ali re­port­ed that gangs from Trinidad are try­ing to claim ter­ri­to­ries in To­ba­go and said some were op­er­at­ing as sleep­er cells.

“It’s sig­nif­i­cant in terms of what we’re see­ing in To­ba­go, where gangs have es­tab­lished them­selves... are con­tin­u­ing to seek oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties, whether it be the con­text of op­por­tu­ni­ties for lu­cra­tive drug blocks or easy av­enues for traf­fick­ing dan­ger­ous.

“That mi­gra­tion to To­ba­go is look­ing to take charge of ter­ri­to­ries that might be lu­cra­tive to the gangs,” Ali said.

The blood­i­est pe­ri­od for Oc­to­ber oc­curred when there were six un­re­lat­ed mur­ders with­in 24 hours two weeks ago.

The mur­ders took place in Port-of-Spain, North East­ern, Cen­tral and North­ern Di­vi­sion North, from the af­ter­noon of Oc­to­ber 23, with the last one re­port­ed just af­ter mid­night on Oc­to­ber 24.

At a JSC sit­ting in Ju­ly, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the po­lice were work­ing to­wards a 15 per cent re­duc­tion in the mur­der toll. At that time, there was a one per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders with 299 record­ed as of Ju­ly 8 com­pared to 301 for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

Days lat­er, the toll over­took the 2023 fig­ure with 341 mur­ders record­ed and has steadi­ly in­creased since then.

Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom, of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, said the in­crease in gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders was part­ly due to how close ri­val gang neigh­bour­hoods are to each oth­er.

In east Port-of-Spain alone, Ob­ser­va­to­ry Street is con­sid­ered to be part of the ter­ri­to­ry of the Sixx gang, while Harpe Place—a mere walk­ing dis­tance away—is con­sid­ered to be un­der the con­trol of the Sev­en gang.

On March 16, four men were gunned down out­side Harpe Place. The in­tend­ed tar­get of the gun­men was not among the vic­tims, po­lice and res­i­dents said.

Thom said the prox­im­i­ty of op­pos­ing fac­tions meant that es­cape af­ter an at­tack is rel­a­tive­ly easy for gun­men.

“When­ev­er these crimes are com­mit­ted, the per­pe­tra­tors have a very short dis­tance to reach their safe­ty zones based on gang af­fil­i­a­tion,” he ex­plained.

“These dri­ve-by shoot­ings are in­dis­crim­i­nate in that the ri­val gangs when look­ing for the op­por­tune time to at­tack their in­tend­ed tar­get. They are not con­cerned with col­lat­er­al dam­age to oth­ers, hence a num­ber of in­no­cent per­sons have lost their lives.”

For the year so far there have been nine in­stances where shoot­ings led to the deaths of mul­ti­ple peo­ple in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion. This in­cludes three dou­ble mur­ders in Ju­ly alone.

Thom said that po­lice have in­tro­duced tar­get­ed op­er­a­tions aimed at sup­press­ing gang vi­o­lence us­ing the Task Force, In­ves­ti­ga­tion and Op­er­a­tional Units.

In ad­di­tion, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion is re­duc­ing the re­sponse time to emer­gen­cies us­ing the Cap­i­tal City Pa­trol Unit formed by DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin.

“The col­lab­o­ra­tion among the new POSD CID, Task Force and IOU has re­sult­ed in a num­ber of per­sons af­fil­i­at­ed or as­so­ci­at­ed with gangs be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged for lar­ce­ny, rob­bery and re­lat­ed of­fences,” he said.

Thom said the en­hanced col­lab­o­ra­tions have pro­duced re­sults in de­ter­ring oth­er se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing as­saults and wound­ings, but gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders re­main a chal­lenge.

Head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Christo­pher Pa­ponette blamed the rise in mur­ders in his di­vi­sion on in­creas­ing gang war­fare.

In ad­di­tion to the com­pe­ti­tion for turf, Pa­ponette said con­flicts al­so arose over “drug routes and re­sources,” with rel­a­tive­ly easy ac­cess to guns a cat­a­lyst for blood­i­er con­fronta­tions.

The lat­est killing oc­curred on Wednes­day night when 54-year-old Har­ry Ramd­hanie and his son Aleem Ramd­hanie, 18, were gunned down at their home at Lewis Lane, Plan­ta­tion Road, Va­len­cia.

The East­ern Di­vi­sion cov­ers Trinidad’s en­tire east coast from Matelot in the north to Rio Claro in the south and con­sists of a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of for­est.

Pa­ponette said crim­i­nals have used the rur­al na­ture of the East­ern Di­vi­sion to their ad­van­tage.

He said: “An in­crease in crim­i­nal mo­bil­i­ty through iso­lat­ed back roads has en­abled gangs to evade po­lice pa­trols, spread­ing vi­o­lence in­to pre­vi­ous­ly low­er-crime ar­eas. We’re en­hanc­ing pa­trols, es­pe­cial­ly along rur­al routes, and in­ten­si­fy­ing in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions with sup­port from spe­cialised units.”

Vi­o­lent crime in the East­ern Di­vi­sion is a rel­a­tive­ly new trend. Be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the di­vi­sion record­ed rel­a­tive­ly low num­bers of mur­ders an­nu­al­ly.

In 2018, then head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Garth Nel­son won nine awards for hav­ing the top-per­form­ing di­vi­sion with a 53 per cent de­tec­tion rate. He got an ad­di­tion­al award that year from the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for hav­ing the safest vil­lage, Matelot.

East­ern Di­vi­sion main­tained its rep­u­ta­tion as a safe space up to March this year when then Snr Supt Ryan Khan ap­peared be­fore a JSC and re­port­ed that there was a 23 per cent drop in mur­ders.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme on Tues­day, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad warned that the rapid in­crease in mur­ders could cause burnout among po­lice of­fi­cers.

Not­ing that the num­ber of homi­cides far out­paces the num­ber of homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors, he said: “That means they are over­whelmed by the num­ber of cas­es, in terms of the lack of re­sources and sup­port to do their job prop­er­ly.”

A homi­cide of­fi­cer lat­er con­firmed that he and his col­leagues are “swamped” by the sheer vol­ume of killings. He said on every shift there are six of­fi­cers at most di­vid­ed in­to two teams of three of­fi­cers each.

T&T is di­vid­ed in­to three zones of cov­er­age for po­lice mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Re­gion I Homi­cide Bu­reau ex­tends from Laven­tille to Ch­aguara­mas, with a sub-of­fice in To­ba­go. The Re­gion II Bu­reau cov­ers the en­tire East-West Cor­ri­dor from Mor­vant to Matelot, while the Re­gion III cov­ers ar­eas in Cen­tral and South Trinidad.

De­tec­tives are re­quired to in­ves­ti­gate all the mur­ders as­signed to them in their re­spec­tive re­gions, so the fre­quen­cy of crime in cer­tain di­vi­sions means that some cas­es are put on hold when more killings are re­port­ed.

In ad­di­tion to the ex­ten­sive in­ter­views and ev­i­dence-gath­er­ing, in­ves­ti­ga­tions must fol­low strict pro­to­cols to en­sure that they find the mur­der­ers and se­cure a con­vic­tion once the mat­ter reach­es the court.

“A mur­der en­quiry must be strate­gic but above board. Tech­niques used must align with the laws and not ap­pear clan­des­tine.

“It can be in­tri­cate and very del­i­cate at the same time to achieve con­vic­tions in the high court we must tread care­ful­ly while go­ing full speed ahead,” the homi­cide of­fi­cer ex­plained.

He said in­ves­ti­ga­tors try to max­imise their out­put by fo­cus­ing on cas­es with high solv­abil­i­ty fac­tors. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted it is dif­fi­cult to man­age the work­load.

“Work­ing on mul­ti­ple en­quiries si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly is men­tal­ly ex­haust­ing. Of­fi­cers are burnt out, but more can be achieved with more man­pow­er, bet­ter com­pen­sa­tion, bet­ter qual­i­ty equip­ment and more mean­ing­ful part­ner­ships with dif­fer­ent agen­cies,” he said