Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hil Kirk says the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion will con­tin­ue build­ing on the crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives in­tro­duced by out­go­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Rishi Singh.

The di­vi­sion is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing a lead­er­ship tran­si­tion, with ACP Anand Rame­sar re­plac­ing Singh af­ter the lat­ter’s six-month tenure on the is­land.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Kirk com­mend­ed Singh for his ef­forts to com­bat crime de­spite lim­it­ed re­sources.

He said po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty across To­ba­go in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der Singh’s lead­er­ship, while sev­er­al mur­ders com­mit­ted this year have been solved, lead­ing to ar­rests and charges.

To­ba­go has record­ed sev­en mur­ders so far in 2026, down from ten last year and 26 in 2024.

On Ju­ly 1, po­lice ar­rest­ed a mur­der sus­pect as he dis­em­barked the Galleons Pas­sage pas­sen­ger fer­ry, just hours af­ter he al­leged­ly killed a woman at her Mt St George home.

Kirk al­so re­cent­ly laud­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic for pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion that led to a $1.1 mil­lion drug bust in Canaan. Two sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and charged in con­nec­tion with the seizure.

Al­though se­ri­ous crime on the is­land has in­creased by one per cent, Kirk not­ed that the crime de­tec­tion rate has al­so im­proved.

He said com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment re­mained a key fo­cus un­der Singh’s lead­er­ship, as po­lice sought to strength­en trust and co­op­er­a­tion with res­i­dents.

“We talked about youth de­vel­op­ment as part of crime-fight­ing ef­forts. We im­ple­ment­ed ex­ten­sive com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing ini­tia­tives through school vis­its and sup­port for youth clubs. One of his fi­nal ini­tia­tives was to re­vive the Whim Po­lice Youth Club and get it back up and run­ning,” Kirk said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing a re­cent in­crease in break-ins and lar­ce­nies, Kirk said po­lice are work­ing close­ly with res­i­dents to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty and re­duce crim­i­nal op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“That is why we have our out­reach cam­paign, en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to make them­selves hard­er tar­gets by se­cur­ing their homes and prop­er­ties. Many of these in­ci­dents can be pre­vent­ed. There needs to be a change in mind­set when it comes to pro­tect­ing prop­er­ty.

“Yes, se­ri­ous crime is up by one per cent, but at the same time we have been do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to bring crime down,” he added.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence ear­li­er this week, Singh at­trib­uted the rise in se­ri­ous crime large­ly to youth delin­quen­cy, while not­ing that law en­force­ment agen­cies and com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers were col­lab­o­rat­ing to ad­dress the so­cial is­sues in­flu­enc­ing young peo­ple.

Mean­while, Kirk as­sured the pub­lic that short­com­ings in polic­ing have been iden­ti­fied and will be ad­dressed as ad­di­tion­al re­sources be­come avail­able.

“As soon as we re­ceive more re­sources, we will de­ploy them to in­crease po­lice pres­ence through­out To­ba­go,” he said.