De­spite what he de­scribed as drops in sev­er­al cat­e­gories of crime, in­clud­ing mur­ders, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the suc­cess­es of the TTPS of­ten go un­no­ticed in the face of cyn­i­cal so­cial me­dia users.

Gue­var­ro quot­ed sev­er­al fig­ures from the po­lice Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at Con­ver­sa­tions with the Com­mis­sion­er, a fo­rum at the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, West­moor­ings, on Thurs­day morn­ing, where he re­port­ed drops in Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes (SRCs) and vi­o­lent crimes across sev­er­al po­lice di­vi­sions.

Gue­var­ro re­port­ed that there were 370 mur­ders in 2025, the low­est na­tion­al mur­der toll since 2011, when a State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared.

He said the num­ber of homi­cides dropped by 42 per cent com­pared with the fi­nal fig­ure for 2024, when 626 mur­ders were re­port­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said that, based on fig­ures pre­sent­ed at the TTPS Comp­stat meet­ing on Tues­day, this year’s fig­ures con­tin­ue to trend down­ward, with a 13 per cent drop in mur­ders.

He lament­ed that de­spite these de­clines, the fear of crime per­sists, which he blamed on per­sons on so­cial me­dia whom he ac­cused of hav­ing an agen­da.

De­scrib­ing these de­trac­tors as “key­board war­riors”, Gue­var­ro said these peo­ple were un­will­ing to give cred­it to the TTPS even when im­prove­ments in crime and pub­lic safe­ty were clear.

“They crit­i­cise the po­lice when the homi­cides drop, they crit­i­cise us when the se­ri­ous crimes drop and they crit­i­cise us when the Car­ni­val record­ed a his­tor­i­cal­ly low (num­ber of crimes), so no mat­ter what you do in re­gards to crime, they will crit­i­cise, so we learn to ac­cept that.

“They crit­i­cise the TTPS even when the coun­try achieved the 42 per cent re­duc­tion in 2025, which is the sec­ond largest an­nu­al per­cent­age re­duc­tion in the world. The on­ly oth­er coun­try to re­duce homi­cides high­er was El Sal­vador and we all know what El Sal­vador had to do, they have been un­der a State of Emer­gency since 2022.

“Why aren’t peo­ple feel­ing that? Why isn’t any­one talk­ing about that? Be­cause fear has gripped this coun­try for so long that we can’t even see when change is com­ing.”

Gue­var­ro ar­gued that the fear and pan­ic sur­round­ing crime were just as bad as crime it­self, as he ques­tioned why some peo­ple were so re­luc­tant to be­lieve that TTPS crime re­duc­tion ef­forts were bear­ing fruit.

Re­fer­ring to crit­ics who raised con­cerns over the ef­fi­ca­cy of the on­go­ing SoE, Gue­var­ro chal­lenged them to state their own ev­i­dence as to why they felt the reg­u­la­tions were un­suc­cess­ful.

“We the TTPS are able to utilise the ex­tra pow­ers giv­en to us by the SoE to take a few of them (crim­i­nals) off the street and look at the re­sults you are see­ing in front of you.

“These are not the re­sults of fail­ure, they are the re­sults of pres­sure, dis­rup­tion and re­lent­less en­force­ment, so when next you hear some­one say the SoE has failed, ask them this… failed ac­cord­ing to whom? Ac­cord­ing to what ev­i­dence? Be­cause the sta­tis­tics tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.”

Notwith­stand­ing these fig­ures, Gue­var­ro ac­knowl­edged that the po­lice could not re­al­is­ti­cal­ly be ex­pect­ed to pre­vent every mur­der, not­ing that, giv­en the un­pre­dictable na­ture of hu­man be­hav­iour, some peo­ple would in­evitably be killed.

“We can’t pre­dict that a man is go­ing to com­mit a homi­cide and go and ar­rest him be­fore. So peo­ple will kill oth­er peo­ple, but we are en­sur­ing that we are able to pro­tect, with the re­sources that we have, the ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try.”

BOX

Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes dropped from 3,413 in 2025 to 2,397 in 2026 for the same pe­ri­od, a 30 per cent re­duc­tion

Vi­o­lent crimes dropped from 1,219 in 2025 to 829, a 32 per cent na­tion­al re­duc­tion

Di­vi­sion­al crime re­duc­tion in SRCs

* North East­ern Di­vi­sion had a 55 per cent re­duc­tion

* To­ba­go Di­vi­sion had a 41 per cent re­duc­tion

* East­ern Di­vi­sion had a 40 per cent re­duc­tion

* North­ern Di­vi­sion had a 40 per cent re­duc­tion

* Cen­tral Di­vi­sion had a 34 per cent re­duc­tion

* South­ern Di­vi­sion had a 32 per cent re­duc­tion