In a na­tion al­ready reel­ing from some of the high­est mur­der rates in the world, April proved to be the blood­i­est month this year.

Some 49 peo­ple were mur­dered in just 30 days. That rep­re­sent­ed a 25 per cent in­crease over the 39 peo­ple killed in April 2018, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial da­ta from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Unit of the TTPS (see side box).

Po­lice blamed the spike on in­ter­nal gang ri­val­ry, wars be­tween gangs, and in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty among Venezue­lan crim­i­nals in the lo­cal nar­cotics trade.

The killings came in clus­ters. Over the four-day East­er week­end, the death toll jumped by 11 when po­lice tal­lied homi­cides from un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dents. Five peo­ple were killed in 24 hours be­tween April 26 and 27. A fam­i­ly of four, in­clud­ing a sev­en-year-old girl, was found with their throats slit in a car in To­co on April 12. An­oth­er fam­i­ly of three was shot to death in their ve­hi­cle in Corinth on April 29.

“April ex­plod­ed in­to a blood­bath,” said crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira, whose re­search spe­cialis­es in the drug trade.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Harold Phillip, con­firmed that il­le­gal drugs played a ma­jor role in dri­ving last month’s homi­cide rate. He re­vealed few de­tails about the in­volve­ment of crim­i­nal gangs in vi­o­lent mur­ders.

“Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­di­cat­ed that most of these crimes oc­curred as a re­sult of con­trol for drug turf, and re­venge,” Phillip told Guardian Me­dia in a text mes­sage. “There were al­so some un­for­tu­nate do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed mur­ders.”

The killings con­tin­ued un­abat­ed in­to May. Gun bat­tles be­tween law en­force­ment and res­i­dents in Big Yard, Care­nage, last Fri­day left a trail of death. Three peo­ple, in­clud­ing a 14-year-old girl, were killed by gun­fire, and four more were in­jured in the melee. Po­lice have not clas­si­fied these deaths apart from say­ing the vic­tims were killed in a po­lice-re­lat­ed shoot­ing.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the MP for the area, found a com­mu­ni­ty on edge when he made an unan­nounced vis­it­ed on Sat­ur­day. One res­i­dent, al­leg­ing cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers are tar­get­ing mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, gave the Prime Min­is­ter an ul­ti­ma­tum: “If this ent solve, we go [deal with it] dif­fer­ent.”

Once al­lies, gang mem­bers be­come foes

Near­ly half—57 of the 120 mur­ders com­mit­ted be­tween Jan­u­ary and March of this year—were mo­ti­vat­ed by gangs and drugs, ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Ser­vice’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the killings.

Figueira said lead­er­ship changes in some gangs over the last year have dis­rupt­ed the sta­tus quo, set­ting the stage for some of the killings that un­fold­ed last month.

“You con­tin­ue to have the dis­lo­ca­tion on the ground where key per­son­nel in 2018 were ‘tak­en out’ and it’s new man­age­ment,” Figueira said. “That re­ver­ber­at­ed in gang­land. So those who are aligned to those who were ‘tak­en out’ are now in a very pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion be­cause they are liv­ing dai­ly ex­pect­ing to be killed.”

“We love to talk about Mus­lim (gang) and Ras­ta City (gang) and say every­thing is that, but what we are not re­al­is­ing is there are fights with­in the groups,” he said.

Law en­force­ment in­tel­li­gence doc­u­ments seen by Guardian Me­dia last month con­firmed the pres­ence of mem­bers of Venezue­lan drug car­tels in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Figueira be­lieves they are try­ing to sup­ply gang mem­bers who are be­ing “starved out” of their old turf.

“They are mak­ing big promis­es that they can sup­ply the gan­ja and the guns you need and they are get­ting a hear­ing from the peo­ple who need sup­plies,” he said.

IS APRIL THE START OF A WOR­RY­ING TREND?

As of April 30, the over­all homi­cide toll was 169, just five few­er over the same pe­ri­od in 2018. Mur­ders climbed from 120 at the end of March 2019 to 169 by the end of April, a 41 per cent in­crease.

The num­ber of homi­cides in April ex­ceed­ed the 2019 month­ly av­er­age of 42. If killings con­tin­ue at this rate, Trinidad and To­ba­go is on course to add to its grim track record of sur­pass­ing 500 mur­ders for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year — and for the fourth time in the na­tion’s his­to­ry.

“April kick­start­ed a wave,” Figueira said. “We have to see if the mo­men­tum con­tin­ues.”

Al­most those killed last month, 83 per cent were men, who have his­tor­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ed the high­est num­ber of homi­cide vic­tims in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Phillip said the homi­cides were con­cen­trat­ed in the West­ern, Port-of-Spain, and North-East­ern Di­vi­sions, av­er­ag­ing about nine mur­ders in each.

BLOODY START TO NEW MONTH

Vi­o­lence surged at the start of May. An el­der­ly cou­ple in To­ba­go, who were good friends with Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, was found bru­tal­ly mur­dered in their home on May 2. A woman po­lice con­sta­ble was set afire, al­leged­ly by a man she knew, at her home in San Juan yes­ter­day. She is in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal. Around the same time, Venezue­lan na­tion­al, Kather­ine Di­az, was be­ing stabbed and chopped to death in Princes Town, al­leged­ly by a male rel­a­tive. An­oth­er fam­i­ly of three were chopped re­peat­ed­ly in Pa­lo Seco yes­ter­day. A sus­pect has been de­tained.

The oth­er af­flic­tion dri­ving the mur­der rate - peo­ple’s propen­si­ty to act on blind­ing rage and ha­tred - ac­count­ed for one third of the mur­ders by the end of March 2019. Po­lice list ‘re­venge’ and ‘al­ter­ca­tion’ as the trig­gers for those killings.

“Killings due to al­ter­ca­tions point in part to our stunt­ed so­cial skills...and in­abil­i­ty to re­solve con­flict with­out re­sort­ing to ag­gres­sion and vi­o­lence, fac­tors that are al­so in­volved in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence,” lament­ed Dr Kati­ja Khan, a lec­tur­er in clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy at UWI St. Au­gus­tine.

Re­fer­ring to the fam­i­ly of four found dead in a car in To­co, Figueira said do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is “a symp­tom of the hard times” as the econ­o­my con­tracts.

“There is a dis­lo­ca­tion, and there is a ten­den­cy for that to be re­flect­ed in vi­o­lence in groups fa­mil­iar with each oth­er,” he said.

GRIF­FITH SAYS LIT­TLE

As the bod­ies piled up in April and the start of May, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, was in­volved in oth­er high-pro­file sto­ries: the search of reg­gae artiste Bu­ju Ban­ton’s ho­tel room, the Com­mis­sion­er’s In­sta­gram-ready apol­o­gy, his cameo at Ban­ton’s con­cert, and his spar­ring with the me­dia over the po­lice vis­it to Sat Ma­haraj’s TV Jaagri­ti.

At the on­ly po­lice brief­ing chaired by Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith for the month, on April 24, he said noth­ing about the dou­ble-dig­it East­er week­end slaugh­ter. Those killings hap­pened while po­lice were on a height­ened “Red Alert.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Com­mis­sion­er, who is re­port­ed­ly out of the coun­try, on What­sApp for his com­ments on this sto­ry. He di­rect­ed us to Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Phillip.

Figueira con­tends the TTPS needs a dif­fer­ent type of polic­ing to dis­man­tle the gangs, and should make use of the An­ti-Gang law passed last year.

“The An­ti-Gang (law) is just a bat­ter­ing ram,” he said. “To pen­e­trate and dis­man­tle you need long-term, high qual­i­ty covert work...be­cause you have to build cas­es. To date, I have seen not seen signs of an or­gan­i­sa­tion dis­man­tled.”

He said the TTPS needs to ap­ply the method­ol­o­gy it used to probe al­leged cor­rup­tion and con­spir­a­cy in­volv­ing for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan, UNC Sen­a­tor, Ger­ald Ramdeen, and Queen’s Coun­sel, Vin­cent Nel­son, and “flip” co-con­spir­a­tors in gangs like they did with Nel­son’s plea deal.

Phillip told Guardian Me­dia that po­lice con­tin­ue “to col­lect, analyse and eval­u­ate the avail­able in­tel­li­gence to op­er­a­tionalise it.”

He in­sist­ed strate­gies have pro­duced re­sults, cit­ing the ar­rests of of­fend­ers and the seizures of il­le­gal firearms and drugs.

With­in days of be­ing ap­point­ed last Au­gust, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith promised that by the time his tenure hits the one year mark, the Po­lice Ser­vice would be more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive.

While there have been res­cues of kid­nap vic­tims, ma­jor drug busts, and now cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tions lead­ing to charges against two high-pro­file politi­cians, the homi­cide rate is re­gard­ed as the most tan­gi­ble in­di­ca­tor of the ef­fec­tive­ness of po­lice de­part­ments.

The sta­tis­tics so far show lit­tle change in the body count.