Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk is urg­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to be cau­tious when rent­ing apart­ments to strangers. Speak­ing at a po­lice town meet­ing in Whim on Mon­day night, Kirk said it was im­por­tant to safe­guard per­son­al space and prop­er­ty.

Kirk raised con­cerns about a trou­bling trend: “Peo­ple rent out apart­ments to peo­ple, and they don’t even know their names. How could that be pos­si­ble? And when they rent it out to two peo­ple, by next week it have ten peo­ple. And you don’t know who some­body is hid­ing from.”

He warned land­lords that this lack of vig­i­lance could make them vul­ner­a­ble to rob­bery and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes.

“When he gets com­fort­able and he re­alis­es you are a soft tar­get, he clean out your whole house, and at the end of the day, you don’t even know who was in your apart­ment. When you do your home­work, it makes it easy for peo­ple to treat with your prob­lem. Don’t let any­one say you’re an in­former. You have to pro­tect you, your chil­dren, and your gen­er­a­tion.”

On a pos­i­tive note, Kirk shared that more To­bag­o­ni­ans are step­ping for­ward to as­sist the po­lice. But he al­so crit­i­cised busi­ness­es that al­low loi­ter­ing and, in some cas­es, tol­er­ate smok­ing and il­le­gal gam­bling around their premis­es.

Kirk stat­ed, “With every crime that oc­curs, es­pe­cial­ly homi­cides, it has an im­pact on the econ­o­my of To­ba­go. When one mur­der hap­pens in To­ba­go–al­though you will see much more in Trinidad—when one mur­der hap­pens in To­ba­go, it is ref­er­enced like about 200 oc­curred in Trinidad. That one mur­der can cause such an im­pact that it could keep mon­ey from com­ing in­to your pock­et (busi­ness).”

The is­land record­ed ten mur­ders in 2024, a 50 per cent in­crease com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2023. Of these cas­es, in­ves­ti­ga­tors have solved two and are close to clos­ing two more.

“We have seen a de­crease in vi­o­lent crimes, and we have ar­rest­ed sev­er­al peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for rob­beries and break-ins.”

Kirk re­mind­ed the com­mu­ni­ty that part­ner­ship is cru­cial in keep­ing crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty un­der con­trol.

He warned To­bag­o­ni­ans that the same crim­i­nals they pro­tect will even­tu­al­ly turn against them.

Last month, the To­ba­go TTPS Di­vi­sion es­tab­lished its first In­ter-Agency Task Force unit as well as a Guard and Emer­gency Branch bu­reau. A to­tal of 24 of­fi­cers from both units ar­rived in To­ba­go in mid-May.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a batch of 21 po­lice of­fi­cers from re­cent re­cruits were dis­patched to To­ba­go to help man­age the crime sit­u­a­tion.