Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Al­most a year af­ter tak­ing com­mand of the To­ba­go po­lice di­vi­sion, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Earl Elie says the is­land has record­ed one of its sharpest drops in mur­ders and vi­o­lent crime in years.

Elie was ap­point­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2024 to head op­er­a­tions, re­plac­ing Snr Supt Rod­hill Kirk in a reshuf­fle of the di­vi­sion’s top brass. He said the man­date when he ar­rived was to end the blood­shed. Now, with the lat­est fig­ures show­ing mur­ders down from 19 at this time last year to just five in Au­gust, Elie be­lieves the strat­e­gy is work­ing.

“This is the re­sult of hard work and com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion by the of­fi­cers of To­ba­go. This is not an overnight suc­cess,” he told Guardian Me­dia af­ter a po­lice town meet­ing at the Canaan/Bon Ac­cord Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Wednes­day night.

“One mur­der for us is too much. I wish I could have stood here and told you that the sta­tis­tics for the year are ze­ro. But five com­pared to 20 is in­deed an im­prove­ment,” he added. He al­so point­ed to a ma­jor re­duc­tion in shoot­ings and wound­ings.

“We have mur­ders down from 19 to 5. We have wound­ings and shoot­ings down from I think it’s about 52 or 53 this time of the year to about 15 or 16 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od. To me, that’s an achieve­ment,” he said.

Elie cred­it­ed the progress to the strate­gies im­ple­ment­ed by the di­vi­sion, along with sup­port from res­i­dents.

“It’s not an achieve­ment by chance, but it’s an achieve­ment which shows the ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment of the of­fi­cers in To­ba­go. Be­cause we are re­al­ly bent on mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in To­ba­go. To­ba­go is par­adise. To­ba­go is love. And we re­al­ly want to see To­ba­go re­gain that lev­el of re­spect and recog­ni­tion as a place where vis­i­tors and the res­i­dents can feel free from crime and the ef­fects of crime.” He said prepa­ra­tion for the Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val was al­ready well un­der­way, fol­low­ing what he de­scribed as a crime-free fes­ti­val in 2024.

“We are guar­an­tee­ing the pub­lic that we are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that this Car­ni­val 2025 in To­ba­go will be even safer than the one last year.”

With the coun­try still un­der the State of Emer­gency, Elie ex­plained that the is­land has not eased up on its ap­proach.

“From the last SoE to now, To­ba­go has not re­lent­ed in our ap­proach as to how we treat with crime. We have main­tained that modus operan­di in terms of our ex­er­cis­es and the dif­fer­ent strate­gies that we em­ploy. Every day we have six, sev­en, eight ex­er­cis­es, from house search­es, road­blocks and var­i­ous ex­er­cis­es. And this has been con­tin­u­ous even pri­or to the SoE. But the SoE gives us that ad­di­tion­al teeth for us to act up­on.”

Look­ing ahead, Elie said pres­sure is not a con­cern.

“I am quite com­fort­able and re­lieved, be­cause I be­lieve that the per­for­mance by the po­lice re­al­ly cre­ates that con­fi­dence in the pub­lic to reach out and to work with us, which is what we are hope­ful for. I am hope­ful that next year it won’t be five or six mur­ders, but next year it will be ze­ro mur­ders.”

He asked those on the is­land to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing po­lice and to make use of a new con­fi­den­tial hot­line cre­at­ed for the is­land.

“I want the pub­lic to be­come aware of a new tele­phone num­ber, which is 631-HELP, which is for the peo­ple of To­ba­go. And it’s a num­ber for you to utilise. It’s pri­vate, it’s con­fi­den­tial, and it’s a di­rect con­tact to the To­ba­go po­lice.”