Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For the first 21 days of the lat­est State of Emer­gency (SoE), TTPS pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer ASP Owie Rus­sell has re­port­ed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in al­most every cat­e­go­ry of crime com­pared to the same pe­ri­od dur­ing the pre­vi­ous SoE.

The lat­est SoE was de­clared on March 3 fol­low­ing a spike in mur­ders and oth­er vi­o­lent crime. It is the third such mea­sure in as many years, fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar re­sponse by the then PNM-led ad­min­is­tra­tion on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, to quell gang war­fare, and an­oth­er on Ju­ly 18, 2025, in re­sponse to a pur­port­ed plot by crim­i­nals to tar­get law en­force­ment and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

As of Wednes­day morn­ing, there have been 81 mur­ders for the year so far, com­pared to 94 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Speak­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, Rus­sell cit­ed fig­ures from the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) Branch show­ing de­clines in sev­er­al cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing shoot­ings and wound­ings, with on­ly 14 re­port­ed.

He al­so re­port­ed a re­duc­tion in sex­u­al of­fences, with 13 cas­es record­ed com­pared to 54 dur­ing the last SoE pe­ri­od.

Oth­er de­creas­es in­clud­ed 50 break-ins com­pared to 74, 51 rob­beries com­pared to 125, 59 lar­ce­nies ver­sus 118, and 26 ve­hi­cle thefts com­pared to 67 in the pre­vi­ous SoE.

De­spite the over­all de­cline, sev­er­al shoot­ings have been record­ed na­tion­wide since the start of the SoE, in­clud­ing two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Bel­mont on March 22 and 23.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns about con­tin­ued vi­o­lence in spe­cif­ic ar­eas, Rus­sell said these in­ci­dents do not in­di­cate an over­all in­crease in crime but war­rant ad­just­ments in polic­ing strate­gies.

“We ask the pub­lic to bring in­for­ma­tion for­ward so we can as­sess our re­sources and re­de­ploy them based on the sta­tis­tics and crime trends we are see­ing in these ar­eas.

“We know there will be in­ci­dents from time to time, but we stand ready and will con­tin­ue to do our best to al­le­vi­ate the fears of the pub­lic.”

Rus­sell ac­knowl­edged a slight in­crease in home in­va­sions but as­sured that “se­ri­ous and ro­bust” in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing. He ref­er­enced a re­cent case in the South­ern Di­vi­sion in which two sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and are ex­pect­ed to be is­sued Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

He re­port­ed that be­tween March 3 and 23, a to­tal of 782 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed, with 176 charged.

Rus­sell added that 48 firearms and 1,376 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion were seized, along with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 179,859 grammes of mar­i­jua­na, 1,904 grammes of co­caine, 229 grammes of crys­tal meth, 12.05 grammes of ec­sta­sy, 39 grammes of hero­in and 807.3 grammes of mol­ly.

When asked about the homi­cide de­tec­tion rate and a break­down of mur­ders by polic­ing di­vi­sion, Rus­sell said he did not have the da­ta avail­able but would pro­vide it at a lat­er time.