Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While he ac­knowl­edges that a re­cent uptick in mur­ders was un­for­tu­nate, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the most re­cent spate of mur­ders was not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­lat­ed to the ac­tiv­i­ties that sparked the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, as they each took place in a dif­fer­ent part of the coun­try and un­der dif­fer­ing cir­cum­stances.

On Tues­day, six mur­ders were re­port­ed. Among the vic­tims were Jovell Paul, 15, and his broth­er Rod­ney Slater, 23, who were gunned down in Mt Hope.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter a po­lice raid at an il­le­gal quar­ry­ing site on Tumpuna Road South yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro not­ed that while he felt the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice had made some progress in crime re­duc­tion for the year thus far, it was fair to ac­knowl­edge weak­ness­es when they emerged.

“From my point of view and the per­son I have in­ter­act­ed with over the past 72 hours or so, we are look­ing at it as a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in terms of yes, we have got­ten gains, but we re­alise there are places we can de­vel­op and do bet­ter in,” he said.

“I can­not come to you with good all the time. There are some times when we have to ad­dress the bad, and this is one of those sit­u­a­tions.”

Gue­var­ro, how­ev­er, main­tained that the mur­ders did not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­flect a fail­ure on the part of the po­lice, as there were five an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions hap­pen­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly dur­ing the times the mur­ders were com­mit­ted on Tues­day.

He main­tained that po­lice have kept up a vis­i­ble pres­ence through­out the SoE, to the point where he re­ceived com­plaints from the pub­lic over in­con­ve­niences caused by ex­er­cis­es.

“Can you be­lieve that? Peo­ple call­ing and telling the Com­mis­sion­er, ‘Ay, it have too much po­lice on the street, we suf­fer­ing in­con­ve­nience, we suf­fer­ing this, we suf­fer­ing that.’

“I keep telling them, you, the good law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, are not suf­fer­ing. The crim­i­nals who we are tak­ing off the street and the guns we are tak­ing off the street are suf­fer­ing. So, Trinidad and To­ba­go, bear with us as we try to right the sit­u­a­tion.”