Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Sher­ma May­nard-Wil­son says that tar­get­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions, stronger bonds with the po­lice and the State of Emer­gency (SoE) have led to a re­duc­tion in sev­er­al cat­e­gories of crime, as well as few­er crim­i­nal gangs in her zone of polic­ing.

May­nard-Wil­son re­vealed the da­ta dur­ing a po­lice me­dia brief­ing at the TTPS Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sackville Street, yes­ter­day.

She quot­ed a 32 per cent drop in Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes (SRCs), which al­so in­cludes mur­ders.

May­nard-Wil­son said mur­ders dropped from 43 be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 to June 30, 2025, to 26 for the same cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od this year.

She al­so not­ed that based on pre­vi­ous in­tel­li­gence, there were 16 ac­tive gangs in the North­ern North Di­vi­sion, how­ev­er, re­cent in­for­ma­tion re­vealed that the num­ber of gangs had dropped to 11, with sev­en gang mem­bers from the di­vi­sion be­ing charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act over the past year.

May­nard-Wil­son said the re­duc­tion in the num­ber of gangs was par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant giv­en the di­vi­sion’s his­toric chal­lenges in ad­dress­ing vi­o­lent crime. She cred­it­ed the suc­cess­es to proac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions and in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing from the Crim­i­nal Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit (CGIU) and clos­er ties with com­mu­ni­ties who have be­come more com­fort­able with shar­ing in­for­ma­tion with law en­force­ment.

“Our in­tel­li­gence is not lim­it­ed on­ly to in­for­ma­tion analysed from the hu­man per­spec­tive, but we are al­so look­ing at tech­nol­o­gy.

“I can al­so say that be­cause of our en­gage­ment with the com­mu­ni­ty, you find that con­fi­den­tial­ly peo­ple are shar­ing in­for­ma­tion with us.

“We have mem­bers of our North­ern North who are mem­bers of our Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Unit un­der that kind of watch, so per­sons recog­nis­ing the trust is be­ing de­vel­oped with of­fi­cers of the North­ern North Di­vi­sion, they are will­ing to work with us and that in it­self has helped us in terms of the erad­i­ca­tion and dis­man­tling of these gangs.”

Re­fer­ring to chal­lenges en­coun­tered in Mal­oney some years ago, where res­i­dents were re­luc­tant to share in­for­ma­tion and part­ner with the po­lice, May­nard-Wil­son said sus­tained ef­forts to try and fos­ter a clos­er re­la­tion­ship with the com­mu­ni­ty has re­sult­ed in a more co­he­sive part­ner­ship.

When asked if it was like­ly that some of the crim­i­nals were pushed out of the North­ern North Di­vi­sion and mi­grat­ed to oth­er parts of the coun­try due to the height­ened po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties, May­nard-Wil­son said it was pos­si­ble, us­ing the anal­o­gy of squeez­ing a half-de­flat­ed bal­loon.

She al­so not­ed that while the on­go­ing SoE has en­abled the po­lice to tar­get sus­pects through the is­suance of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), her in­ten­tion was to lay the ground­work for strong polic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties that would con­tin­ue even af­ter it end­ed.

De­spite some suc­cess­es, she said one cat­e­go­ry of crime that re­mained a chal­lenge was lar­ce­ny mo­tor ve­hi­cles, with Nis­san Ti­idas, Toy­ota Field­ers, K2700, H100s and Hon­da Vezels be­ing the ve­hi­cles of choice for crim­i­nals.

She not­ed that “hotspot” ar­eas with­in the di­vi­sion for ve­hi­cle thefts were Pin­to Road, Mal­abar, Waller­field and San Rafael.

She added that a team of of­fi­cers were as­sem­bled to tack­le ve­hi­cle thefts to iden­ti­fy sus­pects, not­ing that ear­li­er this year of­fi­cers set up a “sting” op­er­a­tion where one per­son was ar­rest­ed when they iden­ti­fied a ve­hi­cle that was stolen, but was lat­er ad­ver­tised as be­ing for sale.

She said part of the po­lice re­sponse to quell fur­ther thefts would be in­creased po­lice pres­ence in­clud­ing plain-clothes of­fi­cers.

The North­ern North Di­vi­sion cov­ers sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties and town­ships in north­east Trinidad in­clud­ing Mal­oney, Ari­ma, La Hor­quet­ta, Cu­mu­to, Las Lo­mas and part of Blan­chisseuse.

The di­vi­sion is bor­dered by the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, the North-East­ern Di­vi­sion via Blan­chisseuse, the East­ern Di­vi­sion and the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.