Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

There has been a de­crease in the mur­der de­tec­tion rate for the first quar­ter of 2024.

Da­ta from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which analysed 142 mur­ders com­mit­ted be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2024, and April 1, 2024, record­ed an eight per cent de­tec­tion rate. For the same pe­ri­od in 2023, there was a 16 per cent de­tec­tion rate for the 141 mur­ders record­ed.

The over­all poor de­tec­tion rate of mur­ders is not a new phe­nom­e­non, as the ac­tu­al fig­ure tends to drift be­low 20 per cent in any giv­en year.

One of the high­est de­tec­tion rates in T&T was re­port­ed in 1990, with 69 per cent at a time when there were on­ly 84 mur­ders.

In De­cem­ber 2022, crim­i­nol­o­gist and for­mer chair of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC), Prof Ramesh De­osaran, re­port­ed that the low­est an­nu­al de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders in lo­cal his­to­ry—on­ly eight per cent—was record­ed in 2019.

He said the de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders rose slight­ly to 14 per cent in 2020 dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in T&T when the num­ber of mur­ders for that year was a rel­a­tive­ly low 399.

Da­ta com­piled by the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch of the po­lice ser­vice al­so re­port­ed that the de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders in 2022 dropped again to 12.5 per cent when the mur­der toll reached the high­est ever with 605 that year.

The de­tec­tion rate in­creased slight­ly in 2023, at 13 per cent.

As of Thurs­day af­ter­noon, there have been 158 mur­ders in 2024, com­pared to 163 mur­ders for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

Mur­der uptick

Im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore and af­ter Car­ni­val, an uptick in mur­ders and vi­o­lent crimes was re­port­ed in and around Port-of-Spain. This is be­lieved to be a con­tin­u­a­tion of gang vi­o­lence from late 2023.

One of the most no­tice­able in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence was the mur­ders of five men in Harpe Place, east Port-of-Spain, on March 16.

Se­nior po­lice in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion said that while one man was ar­rest­ed short­ly af­ter the mur­ders, he was even­tu­al­ly re­leased. No ad­di­tion­al ar­rests have been made.

In ear­ly March, homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ued work on the mur­der of Andy Daniel in Ca­roni. Daniel, 54, was killed on No­vem­ber 11, 2023, by gun­men in a black Nis­san X-Trail who were be­lieved to have been in­volved in a “hit squad” op­er­at­ing with­in the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

Se­nior po­lice sources al­so re­vealed that peo­ple of in­ter­est were al­ready iden­ti­fied in Daniel’s mur­der but main­tained that de­tec­tives were still in the process of build­ing their case, not­ing that the ar­rest of sus­pects would not hap­pen for “some time.”

The 2020 mur­ders of log­ger Bryan Fe­lix and landown­er Aleem Khan were al­so be­ing re­viewed by homi­cide of­fi­cers, who sus­pect a link with the SSA.

An­oth­er ma­jor con­cern is the preva­lence of gen­der-based vi­o­lence and vi­o­lence to­wards chil­dren, as seen in the mur­der of Han­nah Mathu­ra, whose body was said to be buried in the back­yard of her fam­i­ly’s Val­sayn home on March 12.

Two of Mathu­ra’s rel­a­tives, a 66-year-old man and a 62-year-old woman, were ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to her mur­der on March 13 but re­leased days lat­er due to in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence.

In the most re­cent in­ci­dent, four-year-old Ama­rah Lal­lite was be­head­ed by a male rel­a­tive at her fam­i­ly’s Arou­ca home on Mon­day night.

A 39-year-old male rel­a­tive of Ama­rah was ar­rest­ed that night. On Fri­day, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions gave in­struc­tions to charge the sus­pect.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards at the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Jan­u­ary 31, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said that the po­lice failed to meet any of the ob­jec­tives out­lined in the pre­vi­ous year, in­clud­ing a 20 per cent drop in the mur­der rate.

“If you look at our pre­vi­ous achieve­ments over the years, you would see that these tar­gets were nev­er re­al­ly met. So it was an am­bi­tious tar­get to sort of en­cour­age the of­fi­cers to reach that tar­get,” she said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said that of the in­tend­ed 15 per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes (SRCs), the po­lice on­ly achieved a two per cent re­duc­tion.

Broth­er of slain po­lice­man:

Cops can’t give me clo­sure

How­ev­er, sta­tis­tics alone are not enough to de­fine the im­pact of crime.

Lennox Phillip, the old­er broth­er of mur­dered po­lice­man Sgt Lar­ry Phillip, said the mur­der was a con­stant re­minder of the dan­ger in­no­cent by­standers can face.

Phillip was one of five men killed in Harpe Place in March.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve Phillip, 51, who was as­signed to the po­lice ser­vice band as a sax­o­phon­ist, was not the in­tend­ed tar­get of the killers.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Phillip said that while no one has been ar­rest­ed or charged for his broth­er’s mur­der, he did not feel bit­ter.

The el­der Phillip in­sist­ed that on­ly God can give him clo­sure, but he al­so called on the pub­lic to do their part to help the po­lice.

“The po­lice alone can’t do it, but at the same time, a lot of peo­ple live in fear when they want to help the po­lice. The po­lice can’t give me clo­sure. No­body can give me clo­sure be­cause, at the end of the day, noth­ing can be done by me or any­body else to change this. The most the po­lice can do is find the per­pe­tra­tors,” he said.

Po­lice in the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions said one of the main chal­lenges en­coun­tered in be­ing able to ar­rest and charge sus­pects is the lack of suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence.

One of­fi­cer said the re­luc­tance of wit­ness­es to come for­ward and iden­ti­fy sus­pects has brought some on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions to a stand­still.

How­ev­er, for­mer head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion North, Snr Supt Ker­win Fran­cis, dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary 2023, said po­lice re­alised this chal­lenge and have sought to in­clude sci­en­tif­ic test­ing in mur­der in­quiries.

“We, as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, have de­ter­mined we can­not re­ly on ‘I see’ wit­ness­es be­cause of that fear fac­tor that aris­es, which is why we have gone the way of us­ing foren­sics and oth­er bits of tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port our in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“So, our in­ves­ti­ga­tions are no longer the nor­mal, tra­di­tion­al, lin­ear road we would fol­low of try­ing to get wit­ness­es to come for­ward, but we are al­so re­ly­ing on foren­sics, bal­lis­tics, and oth­er tech­nolo­gies to gath­er ev­i­dence to bring charges against in­di­vid­u­als.”

One of­fi­cer said an­oth­er chal­lenge to their work is the mur­der of sus­pects them­selves. An of­fi­cer said that of some 30 mur­ders for the year thus far, the vic­tims were al­so sus­pects of ear­li­er mur­ders.

Not­ing that a mur­der is on­ly con­sid­ered solved once some­one has been ar­rest­ed or charged, the deaths of sus­pects can al­so im­pact the po­lice’s de­tec­tion rate.

“A lot of times, these very same sus­pects are killed be­fore we gath­er enough ev­i­dence to ar­rest them and lay a charge. The streets of­ten take mat­ters in­to their own hands, and we can­not ar­rest some­one who is al­ready dead.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee ear­li­er this year, the head of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Snr Supt Rishi Singh re­port­ed that 2,607 se­ri­ous crimes were solved in 2022.

He added that in 2023, 5,853 se­ri­ous crimes were solved.