Ke­jan Haynes

Al­most one week af­ter the coun­try crossed the dread­ed mile­stone of 300 mur­ders, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher has bro­ken her si­lence, telling the na­tion the TTPS will not re­lent and it will not fail.

The state­ment came via a video state­ment sent out to the me­dia last night, which con­tin­ues the com­mis­sion­er’s streak of months with­out tak­ing di­rect ques­tions from re­porters. It’s some­thing she ad­dressed di­rect­ly in her mes­sage say­ing she un­der­stands the need to ac­count to the pub­lic but ac­cord­ing to her, di­rect­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of the TTPS takes prece­dence.

“There must be an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the fact that there is a lot the po­lice do and knows that will be im­pru­dent and im­prac­ti­cal for the po­lice to dis­close,” she said. “That void how­ev­er, should not be filled with un­in­formed and of­ten un­war­rant­ed crit­i­cal views.”

Speak­ing on the mur­der toll cross­ing 300 which she called a “dread­ed mile­stone,” she ac­knowl­edged that it is that that most con­cerns cit­i­zens and “caus­es their great­est anx­i­ety and grief,” car­ry­ing the “most weight on [her] score­card and that of every po­lice of­fi­cer.”

She said gang ac­tiv­i­ty and drugs are the main caus­es of mur­der.

The com­mis­sion­er not­ed, “Ri­val­ry among mem­bers of in­di­vid­ual gangs and al­liances be­ing formed be­tween break­away groups re­sult­ing in the fight for turf . We ob­serve the prac­tice of re­peat of­fend­ers, shar­ing their ex­pe­ri­ence with their peers, and work­ing to em­pow­er per­pe­tra­tors to in­hib­it the prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion of crimes.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Com­mis­sion­er,for the six month pe­ri­od, Jan­u­ary to June 2023, Trinidad and To­ba­go record­ed 286 mur­ders in­clud­ing 23 dou­ble and four, triple homi­cides. She said the av­er­age for the last 10 years was 257, with the next sec­ond high­est be­ing 278 in 2018 and 259 in 2022.

She made a sim­i­lar ap­peal to that of her pre­de­ces­sors for cit­i­zens to col­lab­o­rate with the TTPS, say­ing if you see some­thing, say some­thing.

“Give us the in­for­ma­tion to make a time­ly in­ter­ven­tion. The life you save could be your own, or that of your loved ones,” the Com­mis­sion im­plored.