Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher yes­ter­day again ap­pealed for help from the pub­lic to bring down the coun­try’s high mur­der rate.

“Help us to save lives. Let’s de­ter­mine that to­geth­er, we can do it in 2024,” she said in the New Year’s Day mes­sage re­leased on so­cial me­dia.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ac­cepts the pub­lic’s crit­i­cism but al­so wel­comes its sup­port.

She point­ed out that the 576 mur­ders record­ed in 2023, down from 605 in 2022, was a de­cline but she is not sat­is­fied.

“While the re­duc­tion of five per cent can be con­sid­ered small, if the con­verse were to be true and there was an in­crease of the same mag­ni­tude, there will be no hes­i­ta­tion in pro­nounc­ing an in­crease,” she said.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, if there is a de­crease of the same mag­ni­tude, we should like­wise be un­am­bigu­ous in ac­knowl­edg­ing that de­crease.”

She added: “We cred­it the small but note­wor­thy de­crease in mur­ders that we have been suc­cess­ful in achiev­ing to our painstak­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, de­tailed plan­ning, clin­i­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion and com­mu­ni­ty in­volve­ment. This we will in­ten­si­fy and con­tin­ue to im­prove up­on, as we are con­fi­dent that the re­sults are a tes­ta­ment that our strate­gies are hav­ing an im­pact.”

The CoP as­sured that the TTPS would not be com­pla­cent with the “lim­it­ed progress” and promised to de­vel­op more in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies in the new year.

She said while there is a dai­ly homi­cide count, “there is no sta­tis­tic that con­veys to what ex­tent ef­fec­tive po­lice op­er­a­tions have pre­vent­ed crime.”

“I agree that every life lost is one life too many, and the TTPS ac­cepts that re­duc­ing the homi­cide rate is our most ur­gent man­date and will be our con­tin­u­ing biggest chal­lenge to ad­dress in 2024,” she said.

The CoP’s mes­sage con­tin­ued: “Il­le­gal firearms con­tin­ue to pose the great­est threat to our ci­tiens. Crim­i­nals have be­come more brazen, show­ing no re­gard for pub­lic safe­ty and sanc­ti­ty of lives, even those of our young chil­dren.

“It is for this rea­son that we will be un­re­lent­ing in our de­ter­mi­na­tion to rid the coun­try of il­le­gal firearms. We be­lieve that every firearm seized trans­lates to mul­ti­ple lives be­ing saved.

“Our in­tel­li­gence ma­chin­ery has been out­stand­ing in their ef­forts to re­duce transna­tion­al crime in­volv­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing and child pros­ti­tu­tion; and in dis­man­tling lo­cal and re­gion­al drug traf­fick­ing net­works; dis­rupt­ing ma­jor op­er­a­tions ad min­imis­ing the im­pact of these en­ti­ties on our lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties. This past year we had sev­er­al his­toric and un­prece­dent­ed out­comes re­sult­ing from their in­ter­ven­tions.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said she was “ex­treme­ly pleased” with the progress made in part­ner­ships and en­gage­ments with stake­hold­ers, and with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ini­tia­tives aimed at build­ing com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tion­ships.

“As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, we be­lieve in con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment and are res­olute and com­mit­ted to get­ting the job done,” she said.

“In this re­gard, we are al­ready in the process of mo­bil­is­ing our re­sources and sharply fo­cused on build­ing our ca­pac­i­ty and com­pe­tence to in­ten­si­fy our ef­forts in or­der to mount a for­mi­da­ble of­fence against this na­tion­al scourge.

“We give the cit­i­zens of our beloved coun­try the as­sur­ance that the of­fi­cers of the TTPS will show up for work every day, de­ter­mined to ex­ert our very best ef­forts to pro­vide the re­lief that the pub­lic de­mands and de­serves.”