RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Se­ri­ous crimes in­clud­ing rob­beries and mur­ders are said to be on the de­cline over the past few years in the West­ern Di­vi­sion.

Po­lice said yes­ter­day they be­lieve the suc­cess came af­ter con­stant talks and con­sul­ta­tions with all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness­es and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

This suc­cess sto­ry was high­light­ed dur­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s me­dia brief­ing by Snr Supt and Di­vi­sion­al Com­man­der for the West­ern Di­vi­sion Kelvern Thomp­son.

Thomp­son said in 2021 there was a two per cent in­crease in se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes but proud­ly added that the de­tec­tion rate ex­ceed­ed its tar­get set of 15 per cent to 37 per cent.

He dis­closed that in 2019 there were 75 mur­ders and that fig­ure he added de­clined in the last two years - 46 in 2020 which rep­re­sent­ed a 39 per cent de­duc­tion and 39 mur­ders in 2021, a 15 per cent re­duc­tion.

“The trend con­tin­ues where for the com­par­i­son pe­ri­od last year there were three mur­ders and now one which is a 67 per cent de­crease,” Thomp­son said.

“We had 361 vi­o­lent crimes in 2019 and the re­duc­tion con­tin­ued in 2020, five per cent re­duc­tion at 342 and in 2021, 336, a two per cent re­duc­tion. We al­so had an 86 per cent re­duc­tion with four vi­o­lent crimes re­port­ed com­pared to 29 last year,” he added.

With re­spect to rob­beries, the se­nior of­fi­cer proud­ly stat­ed that even though rob­beries con­tributed 17 per cent of the se­ri­ous crimes in the West­ern Di­vi­sion in 2021 there was a steady de­crease over the last three years.

“In 2019, 204 re­ports of rob­beries. In 2020, 185 which was a nine per cent re­duc­tion and in 2021, 167, a ten per cent re­duc­tion. In Jan­u­ary 2022 there were four com­pared to 14 last year - a 71 per cent re­duc­tion.”

Thomp­son dis­closed fur­ther that with the four rob­beries record­ed for Jan­u­ary they al­ready have a sus­pect who he said will be charged for two of those four in­ci­dents.