ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

Po­lice in To­ba­go have put the is­land’s cit­i­zens on no­tice that every­thing pos­si­ble will be done to deal with gang and gun vi­o­lence on the is­land.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day night, ACP Col­lis Hazel said To­ba­go is see­ing a lev­el of vi­o­lence it has nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore.

He al­so sound­ed an alarm over the preva­lence of high-pow­ered guns, which he re­vealed was not an is­sue just a cou­ple of months ago.

But the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive asked To­bag­o­ni­ans not to pan­ic as the is­land's mur­der toll hit a his­toric 19, af­ter a woman was shot and killed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon in Ar­gyle.

ACP Hazel as­sured cit­i­zens that To­ba­go po­lice have not giv­en up the fight against crime.

“To­day is not an easy task for us to speak as po­lice of­fi­cers with this in­crease, know­ing what we are ac­cus­tomed to,” he said.

“I want to give the cit­i­zens the as­sur­ance that we—as of­fi­cers of the law—will not negate our task and will con­tin­ue to live up to our oath of of­fice,” the se­nior cop pledged.

And while the po­lice in To­ba­go have been per­form­ing well in sev­er­al ar­eas, such as lar­ce­ny and rob­beries, gang in­flu­ence and ac­tiv­i­ty re­main a con­cern.

“Our prob­lem in To­ba­go is lar­ce­ny dwelling house. That was our prob­lem—lar­ce­ny—and we are en­joy­ing a 20% re­duc­tion at this point in time,” ACP Col­lis Hazel points out.  “We didn’t have a gun prob­lem. Now, we have a gun prob­lem be­cause our bor­ders are porous, and any­thing can come in­side there.”

He added: “The Po­lice is not re­spon­si­ble for the pro­tec­tion of our bor­ders, at this point in time ...  But at the end of the day, we are made to po­lice it [il­le­gal weapons] when it gets on land. We will be re­lent­less in en­sur­ing that we work our com­mu­ni­ties to en­sure that we rid this is­land of this gun prob­lem.”

ACP Hazel said this is not a time to crit­i­cise law en­force­ment, but rather, it is a crit­i­cal pe­ri­od in which every cit­i­zen must play their part in the fight against crime.