DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The mur­der of an autis­tic teenag­er in Bar­rack­pore, the killing of a nurse in Carlsen Field, and the brazen as­sas­si­na­tion out­side Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port have all cap­tured the at­ten­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who has pledged a com­bi­na­tion of hard­line tac­tics and so­cial in­ter­ven­tions to com­bat the crime wave grip­ping Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ap­pear­ing on Guardian Me­dia’s Slam 100.5FM with An­cil “Blaze” Isaac and Myles Grant, Young ac­knowl­edged that crime re­mains one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges but reaf­firmed his gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to ad­dress­ing it com­pre­hen­sive­ly.

Young specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­enced the mur­der of 15-year-old Ma­li­ni Per­sad, a Form Two stu­dent of AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege in Bar­rack­pore. She was last seen by her fam­i­ly on April 13. Four days lat­er, po­lice dis­cov­ered what was be­lieved to be her de­com­pos­ing body in a forest­ed area at KPA Trace, off GP Road. The pri­ma­ry sus­pect, 52-year-old Vin­od Avinash Kothai, re­port­ed­ly con­fessed to her mur­der and sub­se­quent­ly end­ed his life in a cell at the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion on April 19.

Young de­scribed it as a deeply trou­bling in­ci­dent that un­der­scores the ur­gent need for a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to pre­vent sim­i­lar tragedies.

“An­oth­er one that has been both­er­ing me tremen­dous­ly is the young autis­tic girl down the Bar­rack­pore area and then a sus­pect takes his own life in a.... well I wouldn’t com­ment on the man­ner. Those show that there are a lot of psy­cho­log­i­cal things that need to be ad­dressed,” he said.

He al­so re­ferred to the “trag­ic” mur­der of 30-year-old nurse O’delle Lal­man-Bap­tiste, who was ab­duct­ed along Carlsen Field on April 18 when her hus­band, Matthias Bap­tiste, stopped to uri­nate on the road­side. The cou­ple was re­port­ed­ly robbed, and Lal­man-Bap­tiste was tak­en. Her body was found near­by dur­ing a po­lice search.

Con­demn­ing the in­ci­dent, he said his ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to im­ple­ment a dual ap­proach to crime-fight­ing, com­bin­ing ag­gres­sive en­force­ment with mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ty-based so­lu­tions. This in­cludes the use of ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy, the es­tab­lish­ment of an elite squad, and leg­isla­tive re­form.

The Prime Min­is­ter fur­ther high­light­ed part­ner­ships with the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice to ex­pand Mi­LAT and the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps, as well as the ex­pan­sion of lo­cal con­tent pro­cure­ment in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) com­mu­ni­ties to stim­u­late mi­cro-economies.

“Don’t un­der­es­ti­mate that mea­sure. What that mea­sure does, it stim­u­lates that lit­tle do­mes­tic econ­o­my in the HDC com­mu­ni­ty,” he ex­plained.

“What it al­so does, it up­lifts be­cause peo­ple then be­gin to feel once again a sense of be­long­ing, a sense of pride. These are some of the things that are lost in the hard con­ver­sa­tions and the ‘oh, you have to do this, you have to do that, and you have to fight fire with fire!’... These are the things that will be­gin to change the cul­ture, and this is what we’re promis­ing. We are not promis­ing to come and throw bil­lions of dol­lars that we don’t have. We’re promis­ing to make it a more ef­fi­cient sys­tem, to make it a more eq­ui­table sys­tem,” he said.

“What we saw in the air­port was hor­rif­ic,” he added, re­fer­ring to the April 17 mur­der of 33-year-old Arkim “Sours” Quash, who was gunned down just out­side the ar­rivals sec­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. He said that is where hard polic­ing will come in­to play and in­sist­ed that he will not en­gage with crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“The way to do it is not to get in bed with the crim­i­nal el­e­ments. That, I am cer­tain about and that is some­thing that I will not be con­don­ing in any way what­so­ev­er be­cause all that does is make it worse. We learned that from Life­S­port.”

On ju­di­cial re­form, the Prime Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged that ef­forts to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy in the courts have so far not yield­ed the de­sired re­sults.

He said col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ju­di­cia­ry will be a pri­or­i­ty af­ter the elec­tion, with a meet­ing al­ready planned with the Chief Jus­tice by April 29 to ex­plore how jus­tice can be ex­pe­dit­ed with­in con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its.

Young ad­mit­ted there is no quick fix for the ju­di­cia­ry’s short­com­ings but stressed the need for ur­gent re­form, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ad­dress­ing re­peat gun of­fend­ers. He lament­ed judges’ fail­ure to im­pose the most strin­gent con­se­quences in­clud­ing ex­or­bi­tant fines and life in prison for peo­ple held for il­le­gal firearms by their third of­fence.

“We can’t be de­tached from the re­al­i­ty. The leg­is­la­tors put that in place be­cause it’s sup­posed to be a de­ter­rent and it’s sup­posed to be used,” he said.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, you hear cas­es about re­peat of­fend­ers, rep­ri­mand­ed and dis­charged. That is the com­plete op­po­site of what you’re try­ing to achieve,” he added.

The State of Emer­gency, which be­gan on De­cem­ber 30 and end­ed on April 13, has been fol­lowed by 123 mur­ders to date for 2025, a de­crease from 173 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year.