KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Head of the TTPS Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment, Su­per­in­ten­dent Michelle Row­ley-Pow­der, says she is con­cerned about a de­crease in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports, em­pha­sis­ing that this de­cline is not nec­es­sar­i­ly good news.

“If I can com­pare last year to this year, we have ac­tu­al­ly seen a de­crease. We had over 3,012 re­ports for 2023, for this pe­ri­od. And when we com­pare, this year’s fig­ures are about 2,312. So we have a de­crease of some­where close to 800, which we don’t choose to cel­e­brate, be­cause we re­al­ly want to flat­ten the curve,” Row­ley-Pow­der said. She was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at East Gates Mall in Trinci­ty dur­ing an out­reach pro­gramme yes­ter­day to com­mem­o­rate the fi­nal day of the 16 days of Ac­tivism Against Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence.

While she ac­knowl­edged the de­crease, Row­ley-Pow­der al­so point­ed out that a re­duc­tion in re­ports might not mean few­er in­ci­dents are oc­cur­ring.

“It may be a step in the right di­rec­tion,” she said, “but we’re not cel­e­brat­ing.”

Row­ley-Pow­der al­so is­sued a strong call for so­ci­ety to take a col­lec­tive ap­proach to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

“Our so­ci­ety some­times turns a blind eye to these is­sues, think­ing ‘it’s man and woman, it’s not my busi­ness,’” she said. “But we need to get out of this mode. Make a re­port on be­half of a rel­a­tive, on be­half of a friend, a neigh­bour. Once you know that there’s that type of ac­tiv­i­ty go­ing on, we call on you to in­form the au­thor­i­ty so some­thing can be done,” Row­ley-Pow­der urged.

On the is­sue of ar­rests, Row­ley-Pow­der con­firmed that the unit had made 153 ar­rests so far this year. How­ev­er, she al­so high­light­ed the is­sue of re­cidi­vism, where vic­tims of­ten re­turn to their abusers.

“The chal­lenge we con­tin­ue to see… is where the vic­tim goes back to the abusers. Our fo­cus is on in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence. So a lot of these peo­ple are mar­ried folks, some of them are com­mon law. There are what we call fi­nan­cial con­straints,” she said. “The harsh re­al­i­ty is some­times that po­lice of­fi­cer has to ar­rest and charge that same per­pe­tra­tor a num­ber of times.”

Row­ley-Pow­der said the Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment treats each re­port with ur­gency.

“There are many times when we re­turn to the same res­i­dence with a call for help, a num­ber of times in one year, and our of­fi­cers are trained to re­spond to each re­port and treat it like the first re­port,” she said.

Row­ley-Pow­der high­light­ed a new ini­tia­tive aimed at help­ing vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. She re­vealed the Hin­du Women’s Or­ga­ni­za­tion, in part­ner­ship with the TTPS, has pro­vid­ed a list of emer­gency con­tact num­bers which will be dis­played in pub­lic places such as doc­tor’s of­fices and oth­er ac­ces­si­ble lo­ca­tions to en­sure vic­tims can eas­i­ly find help when need­ed. 

Look­ing back on the 16 Days of Ac­tivism, Row­ley-Pow­der re­flect­ed on the TTPS’s out­reach ef­forts to raise aware­ness about do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

“Our main role is to en­cour­age re­port­ing. We want to ed­u­cate the pub­lic, raise aware­ness, and cre­ate a col­lec­tive ap­proach to tack­ling do­mes­tic vi­o­lence,” she said.

Dur­ing the 16-day cam­paign, var­i­ous sub­units of the Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment car­ried out out­reach ac­tiv­i­ties, dis­trib­ut­ing brochures, and con­nect­ing with the pub­lic.