The coun­try’s se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, led by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, have as­sured that all po­lice of­fi­cers, in all po­lice sta­tions across the coun­try will be on high alert fol­low­ing a vi­o­lent and bloody week­end which re­sult­ed in 15 peo­ple be­ing killed.

But less than two hours af­ter po­lice ad­dressed the surge in mur­ders, which saw sev­en oc­cur­ring in Port-of-pain, a man was gunned down on Char­lotte Street.

The man who was not iden­ti­fied up to late yes­ter­day evening, was found dead af­ter passers­by heard gun­shots.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in charge of op­er­a­tions, Ju­nior Ben­jamin said all po­lice sta­tions are on high alert and they will be ramp­ing up their pa­trols.

“As DCP in charge of op­er­a­tions, I want to say now that all the sta­tions are on high alert. I want to al­so state that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, we con­tin­ue the fight. This is some­thing that has been done for the last two to three weeks, we have en­sured that we have more and more pa­trols out­side there and I want to as­sure that at this time we have en­sured that there con­tin­ues to be a con­stant pres­ence of the po­lice,” he said.

Ben­jamin said the mur­ders were cause for ur­gent ac­tion by the po­lice and with­in the com­ing days, there will be a high po­lice pres­ence.

“I want to as­sure the pub­lic at this time that we have the task forces, we have the In­ter-Agency Task Force, and Guard and Emer­gency Branch and all the oth­er of­fi­cers on the ground to en­sure that safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the cit­i­zens is a pri­or­i­ty,” he added.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher said of the 14 mur­ders (at the time of the news con­fer­ence), sev­en were gang-re­lat­ed, three were drug-re­lat­ed, three were the re­sult of rob­beries, and the mo­tive for one re­mains un­known.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the po­lice have no­ticed the trend of mul­ti­ple homi­cides and of­fi­cers are do­ing what needs to be done to win the bat­tle against it.

Asked if the po­lice lost their han­dle on crime, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said no. She said the po­lice have the re­sources need­ed and will be in­creas­ing its man­pow­er.

“I want to think we have ad­e­quate re­sources, and we are work­ing on in­creas­ing them. We have in­creased our use of tech­nol­o­gy, how­ev­er, even with the use of tech­nol­o­gy we still need the as­sis­tance of the pub­lic, we still need the hu­man in­tel­li­gence that is why we con­tin­ue to ask the com­mu­ni­ties to part­ner with us,” she said.

Asked what oth­er re­sources are need­ed, the Head of the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Sean Dhipaul said there are oth­er arms of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that com­ple­ment the po­lice and greater as­sis­tance from them will help. He said one such de­part­ment was the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, where more help is need­ed as it per­tains to bal­lis­tic test­ing.

With of­fi­cers re­as­signed to To­ba­go last week, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said that will not im­pede the work done in Trinidad.

Asked what words of as­sur­ance she can give to com­mu­ni­ties that have seen mass shoot­ings such as Man­go Rose, Harpe Place, Gon­za­les and Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said it is time for the res­i­dents to “take back their com­mu­ni­ties.”

“I will say to the res­i­dents that the com­mu­ni­ties be­long to them and they must en­sure that the crim­i­nal­ly mind­ed, that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties will not be tol­er­at­ed,” she urged.

Week­end killings

Head of the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Sean Dhipaul said the mur­ders of Hasani Bonas and Ja­heim Char­los at Agos­ti­ni Street in Gon­za­les, Bel­mont on Fri­day, Je­merc Fon­rose, 20, and Ker­win Mc Leod, 44, Fri­day night at Man­go Rose, Duke Street, Port-of-Spain and the triple killing Dave Lyons, Jah­mar­ley God­dard and Earl Pe­ters on Sun­day af­ter­noon were all gang-re­lat­ed.

The mur­ders of Shawn Nigel George, 36, in San­gre Grande Sat­ur­day morn­ing as well as Ari­ma cou­ple Dwayne Richard­son, 35, and La­toya Voisin, 31 he said were drug-re­lat­ed.

The se­nior of­fi­cer added the mo­tive for the killing of busi­ness­woman Caris­sa Ram­rat­tan and taxi dri­vers Shakem Charles and Dens­ley Eu­dovic were list­ed as rob­beries while the uniden­ti­fied body of a man found in St Made­line on Sun­day re­mains with­out a mo­tive.