Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says that sev­er­al at­tacks in­volv­ing knives, in­clud­ing a mur­der in San Juan, over the week­end have demon­strat­ed a slight shift in the pat­terns of crim­i­nals.

Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing his in­spec­tion of a new batch of elec­tric pa­trol cars at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my and Bar­racks in St James yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said that there were sev­er­al in­ci­dents of stab­bings and chop­pings over the week­end.

On Sun­day, 51-year-old Kevin Samuel was stabbed to death af­ter an ar­gu­ment at a bar on Sad­dle Road, San Juan.

Hours ear­li­er, a 34-year-old man was hos­pi­talised af­ter he was stabbed by a neigh­bour in La Fil­lette.

Then, at around 1.38 pm that same day, po­lice shot and killed Shiv­anan Jo­gie af­ter he re­port­ed­ly charged at them with a cut­lass at his Vic­to­ria Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, home.

Jo­gie was re­port­ed­ly sought by po­lice fol­low­ing a re­port of an as­sault where one man was struck on his head.

Gue­var­ro re­ferred to the in­ci­dents, not­ing that there ap­peared to be a shift from guns as the choice of weapon for crim­i­nals, but said polic­ing ini­tia­tives were still un­der­way to con­tain vi­o­lence as much as prac­ti­cal­ly pos­si­ble.

“If you ob­serve some of the homi­cides this week­end, not gang-re­lat­ed, you had a gen­tle­man armed with a cut­lass chop­ping peo­ple.

“There are oth­er in­stances where peo­ple got stabbed over the week­end, so we see a de­vi­a­tion from firearm-re­lat­ed crime to us­ing ba­sics of knives and that sort of thing, to go back to the old time days of beat­ing it out with knives, cut­lass, bot­tles and that sort of thing.

“At the end of the day, we must un­der­stand that the Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) is just a tool in the hands of the po­lice to keep Trinidad and To­ba­go safe, and we will utilise that tool to the max­i­mum ben­e­fit of the na­tion.”

Re­fer­ring to ear­li­er com­ments made where he in­sist­ed that the fear of crime was just as dam­ag­ing to the na­tion­al psy­che as crime it­self, Gue­var­ro main­tained that avail­able fig­ures in­di­cat­ed that dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of crime were trend­ing down­wards.

“To­mor­row I’m hav­ing an­oth­er Comp­stat meet­ing, and from the da­ta that I’ve seen, it’s still trend­ing in the down­ward di­rec­tion. So at the end of the day, the most I can do is come to the pub­lic and plead with them to get on board and help the po­lice fight crime.”

Dur­ing his ad­dress at the launch of the new pa­trol grid ini­tia­tive, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der al­so urged the pub­lic to part­ner with the au­thor­i­ties in cre­at­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties.

Alexan­der not­ed that while he would not “beg” the pub­lic to do so as he felt it was their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take an in­ter­est in their own safe­ty, he not­ed that even with ad­di­tion­al re­sources, any crime-fight­ing suc­cess would hinge on the sup­port of the pub­lic and their will­ing­ness to part­ner with the po­lice.

“It’s your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a cit­i­zen to sup­port every ef­fort that would make your life safer and bet­ter pro­tect­ed.

“Sup­port law en­force­ment, sup­port your neigh­bour­hood watch and as­sist law en­force­ment in al­ways mak­ing sure that every­thing is okay.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Alexan­der is­sued a warn­ing to crim­i­nals, not­ing that ad­di­tion­al re­sources and strate­gies would make their lives more dif­fi­cult.

“If you don’t stop your be­hav­iour, some­thing will stop you. That’s as sim­ple as I can put it.

“The cit­i­zens need to en­joy their lives, live. The chil­dren need to go to school and re­turn safe­ly. We can’t be on the look­out for you shoot­ing all over the place and think there are no con­se­quences. There are con­se­quences whether you see it now or lat­er.”