JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

De­spite a 50 per cent in­crease in homi­cides in the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion last year com­pared to this year, the di­vi­sion­al head says there is an over­all nine per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia brief­ing, di­vi­sion head, Snr Supt Vern­ly Gift, said the in­crease in homi­cides is linked to al­ter­ca­tions and not gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders.

Gift said of­fi­cers in his di­vi­sion will be en­gag­ing in­sti­tu­tions that deal with anger man­age­ment to pre­pare and present pub­lic out­reach pro­grammes to ad­dress the cause of the in­creased killings.

“For homi­cide, we have seen some in­creas­es, rough­ly about 50 per cent in­crease in the homi­cide, could be a lit­tle more than that. With re­gards to the wound­ing and shoot­ing, we have seen about one per cent or two per cent in­crease in that. The break­ing of­fences, based on the sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta pro­vid­ed by CA­PA, we have seen a slight in­crease. And lar­ce­ny of mo­tor ve­hi­cles, we have seen about a five per cent in­crease.”

Asked what ac­count­ed for the re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes, Gift said in­ten­sive po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the Ea­gle Eye ini­tia­tive launched in Tu­na­puna, in­creased pa­trols in crime hotspots and a fo­cus on pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers con­tributed to the over­all de­cline.

“Our com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ship and our stake­hold­ers’ en­gage­ment would have as­sist­ed us in terms of man­ag­ing those par­tic­u­lar crimes and the re­duc­tion that we are wit­ness­ing right now,” he added.

Ques­tioned on the role of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) in crime re­duc­tion, Gift said it pro­vid­ed po­lice of­fi­cers with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders to tar­get pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers.

“The State of Emer­gency would have af­ford­ed us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­quire a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der, tar­get­ing our pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers, and in most in­stances, plac­ing them in prison on the pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der,” he said, adding that of the 25 PDOs is­sued, sev­en peo­ple were charged with se­ri­ous gun-re­lat­ed of­fences.

Gift added that for the year so far, 28 guns were re­cov­ered.

He added that po­lice al­so ex­e­cut­ed sev­er­al war­rants for way­ward par­ents who failed to ho­n­our their court com­mit­ments for child main­te­nance, to­talling over $1.5 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments.

The se­nior of­fi­cer added that of­fi­cers are con­tin­u­ing to build re­la­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties they po­lice through town meet­ings, sta­tion coun­cil meet­ings, walk­a­bouts and through re­vamped neigh­bour­hood watch groups.

Gift al­so high­light­ed an in­crease in fraud-re­lat­ed cas­es.

“We have no­ticed in the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion an in­crease in fraud per­pe­trat­ed on per­sons pur­chas­ing items on Face­book Mar­ket­place, on Tik­Tok busi­ness place,” he said, warn­ing that peo­ple trans­fer­ring mon­ey in ad­vance to make pur­chas­es for items such as gold from peo­ple un­known to them. He added that the use of coun­ter­feit US cur­ren­cy is al­so a prob­lem in his di­vi­sion and ad­vised res­i­dents to pur­chase from le­git­i­mate and recog­nised busi­ness­es.

Last week, head of the North-East­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne al­so re­port­ed a 38 per cent re­duc­tion in crime de­spite an in­crease in mur­ders in the di­vi­sion.

She said there was a 54 per cent re­duc­tion in wound­ings and shoot­ings, 12 kid­nap­pings last year and three this year. For break-ins, there was a 47 per cent de­crease when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od and lar­ce­ny of ve­hi­cles, an of­fence that she said plagued the di­vi­sion, had seen a 52 per cent de­crease from 54 last year to 26 so far this year.

Asked if these achieve­ments were made thanks to SoE, Guy-Al­leyne said no. She said there was a strate­gic and op­er­a­tional plan im­ple­ment­ed by the di­vi­sion. While the SoE as­sist­ed the po­lice, she said the rolling out of those plans ac­counts for the re­duc­tion.

On June 10, West­ern Di­vi­sion head, Snr Supt Sylvester Williams said there was a 16 per cent re­duc­tion in crimes in his di­vi­sion, al­though kid­nap­pings, break-ins and fraud had in­creased.