Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, like Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher, ex­pressed shock and dis­ap­point­ment over the on­go­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, de­spite the fact that it had at­tract­ed sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion and re­sources from the State.

In a mid­night post to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter's Face­book page, Dr Row­ley said:

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, even the sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have not de­terred the crim­i­nal minds which op­er­ate as though with­out fear of de­tec­tion and cer­tain­ty of time­ly, dis­suad­ing pun­ish­ment."

The PM said he had hoped and ac­tu­al­ly ex­pect­ed the num­ber of mur­ders and vi­o­lent as­saults to de­crease.

In­stead, the coun­try sur­passed its high­est mur­der toll ever, with To­ba­go record­ing, this year alone, dou­ble its pre­vi­ous high­est mur­der toll.

"I am very dis­ap­point­ed in the out­turn where, once again, in this small na­tion, fre­quent killings see us, for the sec­ond year straight, record­ing over 600 deaths at­trib­uted to wide­spread vi­o­lence," PM Row­ley said. "As much as the Po­lice have done, they are re­quired to do much more if the stat­ed ob­jec­tives are to be at­tained."

Dr Row­ley called on the TTPS to in­ten­si­fy their ef­forts and adopt more "pen­e­trat­ing de­tec­tion meth­ods" to make crim­i­nals un­com­fort­able.

He said that while the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to sup­port the Po­lice and oth­er agen­cies, he want­ed all sec­tors of so­ci­ety to stop pro­vid­ing any refuge or com­fort to crim­i­nals.

"To those who know and are do­ing or say­ing noth­ing, stop nor­mal­is­ing crim­i­nal con­duct in your so­cial life, and to those who share the pro­ceeds of vi­o­lent crim­i­nal con­duct, stop en­cour­ag­ing or shield­ing your fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends who are en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal con­duct," he said.

The PM al­so called on the courts and those re­spon­si­ble for dis­pens­ing jus­tice to aban­don le­nien­cy to­wards crim­i­nals, in­sist­ing that they should re­ceive firm pun­ish­ment in ac­cor­dance with the law.

"Stop pre­tend­ing that crim­i­nals are the vic­tims who de­serve on­ly mer­cy when, by their heart­less, law­less be­hav­iour, they are to re­ceive firm pun­ish­ment as pre­scribed by the law, as en­act­ed in an­tic­i­pa­tion of cov­er­ing the var­i­ous desta­bil­is­ing prac­tices," he pro­claimed.

Dr Row­ley said he didn't be­lieve the crime sit­u­a­tion was in­sur­mount­able, but he em­pha­sised that changes across the board were need­ed if the coun­try was to keep vi­o­lent crim­i­nal con­duct where it be­longed.