Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Head of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Vern­ly Gift says that the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders com­mit­ted with­in his di­vi­sion were due to al­ter­ca­tions, as he ap­pealed for the pub­lic to be mind­ful of their anger and walk away from volatile sit­u­a­tions to avoid blood­shed.

Gift was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia dur­ing an ori­en­ta­tion fo­rum for Pri­ma­ry School stu­dents tran­si­tion­ing in­to Sec­ondary School at the El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day.

He was al­so asked to com­ment on the mur­der toll, which now stands at 190 – the same fig­ure record­ed dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

This is the first time in months that the mur­der toll has matched the pre­vi­ous year’s fig­ure, as it has typ­i­cal­ly trend­ed low­er than last year’s toll.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch, as of June 22, the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and the North East­ern Di­vi­sion were tied for the high­est num­ber of mur­ders, with 24 each.

The North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, how­ev­er, showed the largest over­all in­crease on an an­nu­al ba­sis, as on­ly three mur­ders were record­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 to June 22 in 2025, com­pared to the 24 mur­ders record­ed in 2026.

Gift said most of these killings were the re­sult of ar­gu­ments turned vi­o­lent.

He said the di­vi­sion plans to in­tro­duce ad­di­tion­al con­flict-res­o­lu­tion ini­tia­tives through com­mu­ni­ty work­shops and sem­i­nars aimed at im­prov­ing how peo­ple re­spond to po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous con­fronta­tions.

“As adults, we need to deal with our anger dif­fer­ent­ly, so my con­cern re­al­ly is to en­cour­age the com­mu­ni­ty to en­gage in more con­flict-res­o­lu­tion ses­sions and we in­tend to tack­le that through our sta­tion coun­cils, en­cour­ag­ing them to have ses­sions from ex­perts to deal with con­flict res­o­lu­tion and how to man­age anger.

“So we are hop­ing from the next half of the year, our ini­tia­tive will be very ef­fec­tive to man­age the homi­cides that are tak­ing place.”

Gift al­so not­ed that most of the vic­tims of mur­ders were not res­i­dents with­in the di­vi­sion, but peo­ple in tran­sit through the area.

He ac­knowl­edged that con­flict and ar­gu­ments were in­evitable but ex­pressed hope that more peo­ple would adopt a mea­sured ap­proach when dis­putes arise.

“Vi­o­lence is not the an­swer. Through me­di­a­tion... we have the com­mu­ni­ty jus­tice clin­ic the TTPS can of­fer, so we can have dis­pute res­o­lu­tion in an am­i­ca­ble way.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the event, pres­i­dent of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil and mem­ber of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber Neil Boodoos­ingh said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the area has ben­e­fit­ted through en­hanced part­ner­ship with the di­vi­sion­al po­lice.