Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE)—though not in­tend­ed to tar­get vi­o­lent crime—is con­tribut­ing to a marked de­cline in homi­cides so far this year.

“It is im­por­tant to un­der­score that the cur­rent State of Emer­gency was not im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress homi­cide rates but rather in re­sponse to a spe­cif­ic and cred­i­ble threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Nonethe­less, the da­ta sug­gests that the height­ened vig­i­lance and in­ten­si­fied en­force­ment op­er­a­tions un­der this SoE may be con­tribut­ing to a re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime,” Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro stat­ed.

His com­ment fol­lowed a re­cent uptick in fa­tal shoot­ings.

Dur­ing an ex­change of What­sApp mes­sages with Guardian Me­dia, Gue­var­ro not­ed that ac­cord­ing to pro­vi­sion­al da­ta from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch, 231 mur­ders were record­ed na­tion­wide be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and Au­gust 4, 2025.

“This marks a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in pre­vi­ous years.”

He added, “When placed against his­tor­i­cal da­ta, there has been a 14.8 per cent re­duc­tion com­pared to 2020 (271 mur­ders). A 29.8 per cent de­crease com­pared to 2022 (329 mur­ders). A 32.3 per cent de­crease com­pared to 2023 (341 mur­ders), and a 35.5 per cent de­crease com­pared to 2024 (358 mur­ders).”

The CoP ex­plained that on­ly 2021 saw few­er mur­ders dur­ing this pe­ri­od, with 218 homi­cides.

“At a time when the na­tion was un­der a State of Emer­gency prompt­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, that par­tic­u­lar SoE in­volved ex­tra­or­di­nary re­stric­tions, in­clud­ing cur­fews, which di­rect­ly in­flu­enced crim­i­nal op­por­tu­ni­ty and mo­bil­i­ty.”

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, how­ev­er, urged cau­tion in in­ter­pret­ing the da­ta. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les warned against be­ing over­ly swayed by num­bers.

“I en­cour­age the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his charges to con­tin­ue the fight. Don’t get too dis­tract­ed by sta­tis­tics. The fear of crime is what per­me­ates the psy­che of the coun­try and the con­fi­dence the pub­lic needs to have in the abil­i­ty of the TTPS to fight crime,” he said.

Gon­za­les al­so warned that de­bat­ing and dis­cussing sta­tis­tics will not help.

“I al­so want to ad­vise the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to be vig­i­lant be­cause there may be se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised per­sons in of­fi­cial­dom whose agen­da might be dif­fer­ent from his.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so weighed in on the re­cent da­ta, say­ing he was not sur­prised by the re­port­ed de­cline in homi­cides.

“Once you have some sort of re­stric­tion in place and height­ened pow­ers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, such as what will be ob­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency, you tend to gen­er­al­ly see a drop in crime, and this hap­pens for sev­er­al rea­sons. One of the key rea­sons re­lates to rou­tine ac­tiv­i­ties, and you may have heard of the rou­tine ac­tiv­i­ties the­o­ry; it al­so has to do with de­ter­rence.”

Still, he cred­it­ed the com­mis­sion­er’s pro­posed an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives and em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of ex­pand­ing crime-fight­ing strate­gies be­yond en­force­ment alone.

“I am hop­ing to see a widen­ing in terms of the ap­proach­es, mean­ing the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty try­ing to en­gage the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and oth­er sys­tems where oth­er types of more pre­ven­ta­tive ini­tia­tives are tak­ing place be­cause at the heart of it still is what they are do­ing is sup­pres­sive, which is im­por­tant, but you do need the pre­ven­ta­tive as­pect.”

Dr Seep­er­sad al­so ap­plaud­ed the steps be­ing tak­en by law en­force­ment to ad­dress crime.