Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has ad­mit­ted to be­ing dis­ap­point­ed that mur­ders have reached a new record mark.

She made the com­ment in a state­ment late Mon­day night, even as six more peo­ple were mur­dered be­tween Mon­day and yes­ter­day, tak­ing T&T’s mur­der toll to 608. The pre­vi­ous high­est mur­der toll was 605 in 2022. The toll at the same time last year was 562.

In a state­ment, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the killings had erod­ed “a sig­nif­i­cant­ly large amount of good work” done by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“The crim­i­nal el­e­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go per­sists and con­tin­ues to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for vi­o­lent crimes to be com­mit­ted. They have be­come more brazen and in­dis­crim­i­nate in their des­per­ate at­tempts at main­tain­ing their crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es,” Hare­wood-Christop­er said.

“This will con­tin­ue to be our chal­lenge un­til such time that we suc­ceed in di­vert­ing the minds of the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in our so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly our young men, from the com­mis­sion of vi­o­lent crimes to more pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties.”

She re­mind­ed the coun­try that mur­ders are not a po­lice is­sue but a na­tion­al one and as such, it is the du­ty of every cit­i­zen to help the TTPS re­duce the mur­der toll.

“Let’s de­vel­op the courage and the con­fi­dence to do what is re­quired,” she said.

“We must be­come more de­lib­er­ate about the type of so­ci­ety we want, and work res­olute­ly, col­lec­tive­ly and pur­pose­ful­ly to achieve that re­sult. We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to con­done crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, or al­low our­selves to be in­tim­i­dat­ed by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

How­ev­er, she gave the as­sur­ance that her of­fi­cers will keep up their ef­forts.

“The TTPS will con­tin­ue to ex­ert it­self to the fullest ex­tent to do what is re­quired to de­liv­er ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment to the de­serv­ing cit­i­zen­ry. We give our un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment in that re­gard,” Hare­wood-Christop­er said.

How­ev­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira yes­ter­day said the state has failed in its du­ty to ad­dress crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, and one way to­wards fix­ing that is the im­me­di­ate ref­or­ma­tion of the TTPS.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Figueira said politi­cians are fail­ing to ad­dress crime, as it will come with a po­lit­i­cal price they are not will­ing to pay.

“My per­son­al point of view is that they don’t want to pay the po­lit­i­cal price to do what is nec­es­sary ... The polic­ing have to get re­al. And the polic­ing and the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus have to ac­cept what we are faced with. It is not what they want to say, what we are faced with, but what re­al­i­ty on the ground is telling us we are faced with.”

He said there is an im­me­di­ate need for an in-depth re­form of the TTPS and the en­tire na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, as well as the Ju­di­cia­ry, pris­ons and Cus­toms and Ex­cise, which he said are all cur­rent­ly un­fit for pur­pose.

“The state is def­i­nite­ly not fit for pur­pose. I want to know how long these politi­cians feel they could con­tin­ue with this game be­cause re­mem­ber, it is the du­ty of the politi­cians to guar­an­tee pub­lic safe­ty. They are the ones we have elect­ed to gov­ern, not the TTPS, not the Cus­toms and Ex­cise, not Im­mi­gra­tion, not the prison ser­vice or the Ju­di­cia­ry. The buck stops with them.”

His sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed by Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, who on Mon­day told Guardian Me­dia it was in­ac­tion from those in au­thor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for the cur­rent mur­der toll.

“The is­sue for us is not a case of that we can’t fig­ure out what to do or it is a prob­lem too dif­fi­cult to solve. The prob­lem for us is one of in­ac­tion. So, the prob­lem for us in this coun­try is not that we don’t know what to do, the prob­lem is one of in­ac­tion that we sim­ply don’t do what needs to be done. At this point, it is a waste of time to start to out­line all the plans and strate­gies,” Seep­er­sad said.