Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Head of the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion ACP Col­lis Hazel yes­ter­day as­sured that crime on the is­land will not reach the lev­el record­ed in Trinidad.

Al­though he ac­knowl­edged that there is es­ca­lat­ing fear among To­bag­o­ni­ans due to the re­cent rise in mur­ders on the is­land, which is al­ready show­ing an in­crease com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, Hazel said To­ba­go po­lice is do­ing all in its pow­er to sti­fle crim­i­nal el­e­ments and keep the mur­der toll low.

“I re­sent that by all means,” he said when it was sug­gest­ed that mur­ders on the is­land could get to the lev­els record­ed in Trinidad.

“I don’t want to be able to as­so­ciate that feel­ing at all with To­ba­go, a place called par­adise. We would not hide our head in the sand, how­ev­er.

“To­ba­go is nowhere and can­not be in com­par­a­tive na­ture with that of Trinidad as it re­lates to crime. So, I re­sent all state­ments as­so­ci­at­ing us with that brand­ing.”

His com­ments came fol­low­ing a state­ment made by Anslem Richards, a crim­i­nol­o­gist and ad­vi­sor to To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Richards had said that in con­sid­er­ing the per-capi­ta crime ra­tio, the oc­cur­rence of ten mur­ders in To­ba­go, with a pop­u­la­tion of 60 to 65,000, is rel­a­tive­ly high­er than 400 mur­ders in a pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 mil­lion in Trinidad.

How­ev­er, the death of To­ba­go’s lat­est vic­tim, Rae Ann Hen­ry, is no longer clas­si­fied as a homi­cide, as a coro­ner’s in­quest has been or­dered by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Hazel dis­missed any com­par­isons be­tween the mur­der rates in Trinidad and To­ba­go, em­pha­siz­ing that based on the avail­able fig­ures, To­ba­go is not in the same dire state as Trinidad.

“We live in a re­al world and at the end of the day one of the things we can’t pre­dict is what can­not hap­pen in polic­ing,” he said.

“We need to find a dif­fer­ent way of re­solv­ing con­flict rather than re­act­ing to vi­o­lence in that in­hu­mane way. I con­tin­ue to en­cour­age the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go that there are many op­por­tu­ni­ties in which we can reach out as an in­di­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty in or­der to re­solve con­flict. The po­lice are ready and will­ing to work with per­son in so do­ing rather than re­sort­ing to vi­o­lence.

“It is very un­for­tu­nate that we all have reach that toll in terms of homi­cide but we con­tin­ue to work with the com­mu­ni­ties and in­di­vid­u­als to en­sure we re­duce crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.”