Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing the mur­der of three peo­ple on Sat­ur­day night—two with­in his Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy—Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said he is deeply con­cerned about the cur­rent spate of killings.

He added that the gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) could have helped curb vi­o­lent crime and po­ten­tial­ly pre­vent­ed some of the re­cent mur­ders.

The Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment) Bill col­lapsed in the Sen­ate on Jan­u­ary 27, de­spite be­ing passed in the Low­er House ear­li­er that month. Sev­er­al In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against the bill, re­sult­ing in its fail­ure.

On Sat­ur­day night, 18-year-old Je­sus Sergeant and 29-year-old Kyle Alexan­der were shot dead on El Do­ra­do Road, Tu­na­puna. These were the fifth dou­ble mur­der in­ci­dents re­port­ed this year, com­pared with three dur­ing the same pe­ri­od in 2025. Hours lat­er, Cur­tis “Bird” Pierre was killed out­side a piz­za restau­rant on the Val­sayn food strip near Grand Bazaar.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ltd yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said he was “not com­fort­able” with the surge in vi­o­lent in­ci­dents.

“I am in no way sat­is­fied, but I know the po­lice ser­vice are do­ing their best. They too are con­strained by ex­pens­es in­curred by past lead­er­ship over the years,” he said.

Alexan­der al­so crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion for fail­ing to sup­port the bill.

“They al­ways ask about our crime plan, but when we put some­thing for­ward, it is not sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion or oth­ers. They should ask res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ties they rep­re­sent whether they want­ed this type of law en­force­ment pres­ence. Peo­ple con­tin­ue to miss out on what could have been a per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to change things,” he said.

He not­ed that the ZOSO strat­e­gy was de­signed not on­ly to pre­vent vi­o­lent flare-ups but al­so to in­tro­duce tar­get­ed so­cial sup­port, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al as­sis­tance and em­ploy­ment pro­grams, which many res­i­dents of high-risk com­mu­ni­ties would oth­er­wise strug­gle to ac­cess.

Re­flect­ing on the mur­ders of Sergeant and Alexan­der, which oc­curred with­in his con­stituen­cy, Alexan­der said he was “par­tic­u­lar­ly sad­dened.” He al­so urged law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to dis­tance them­selves from friends or rel­a­tives sus­pect­ed of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, not­ing that even ca­su­al as­so­ci­a­tion could put them at risk.

“Keep your be­hav­iour away from your fam­i­ly. If you’re in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, move away from your fam­i­ly so they won’t have to deal with your prob­lems,” he ad­vised.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so urged the gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er pass­ing the ZOSO bill. He said des­ig­nat­ed zones could be an ef­fec­tive tool to tack­le crime proac­tive­ly while con­nect­ing gov­ern­ment ser­vices to so­cial­ly chal­lenged ar­eas.

“This could be a se­ri­ous game chang­er if done prop­er­ly. You can sup­press crime with po­lice pres­ence while pro­vid­ing so­cial ser­vices like psy­chol­o­gists and so­cial work­ers to ad­dress the root caus­es. It builds trust and con­fi­dence in high-crime com­mu­ni­ties and changes the cul­ture,” he said.

Seep­er­sad cit­ed Ja­maica’s suc­cess with ZOSO op­er­a­tions as an ex­am­ple of how the strat­e­gy can ad­dress crime on mul­ti­ple lev­els.

He called on the gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion, and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors to set aside dif­fer­ences in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al safe­ty.

Re­fer­ring to the five dou­ble mur­ders re­port­ed so far this year—com­pared with three in 2025—Seep­er­sad cau­tioned that, while the fig­ures are still small, they could in­di­cate a wors­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion if the trend con­tin­ues.

“There aren’t enough da­ta points yet to draw sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant con­clu­sions, but the trend is wor­ry­ing. If it con­tin­ues, we could reach a point where the sta­tis­tics clear­ly show that mur­der rates are ris­ing be­yond pre­vi­ous lev­els,” he said.