The Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice says there has been a slight de­crease in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es this year, in com­par­i­son to last year. Of­fi­cers have al­so no­ticed a de­cline in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence-re­lat­ed mur­ders for 2021 as op­posed to 2020, when there was an alarm­ing num­ber of in­ti­mate part­ner killings.

But while the GB­VU has wel­comed the slight de­crease in mur­ders and cas­es, it said re­ports of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence among the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in T&T have been on the rise.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit head, Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, said, “We have had a lot of re­ports com­ing through the TTPS App and on­line re­port­ing so we are see­ing an in­crease in re­ports and we want to en­cour­age the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to do that. If they see some­thing, say some­thing.”

She added that the num­ber of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence-re­lat­ed mur­ders have dropped when com­par­ing last year to this year.

“When we look at stats, Jan­u­ary to No­vem­ber, we saw a dras­tic de­crease in women killed via do­mes­tic sit­u­a­tions. Last year around this time, we had about 24. To date, we have 12 (male and fe­male). Eight fe­males and four males,” Guy-Al­leyne said.

While there has been a de­cline in some as­pects, Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit man­ag­er Aisha Cor­bie said more peo­ple are seek­ing as­sis­tance from the sup­port unit. She said in 2020, they saw 899 vic­tims while from the start of this year to date they ac­com­mo­dat­ed 858 peo­ple.

“We have seen some in­creased num­bers since COVID-19 yes, but it may al­so be due to the fact that there is greater con­fi­dence in com­ing to make re­ports be­cause of the ad­vent of the GB­VU, which co­in­cid­ed with the same time of the pan­dem­ic in 2020,” Cor­bie said.

“The greater per­cent­age of per­sons seek­ing as­sis­tance from the VSU has been for as­sault and as­sault-re­lat­ed mat­ters, usu­al­ly phys­i­cal as­sault.”

Guy-Al­leyne said her­self, ACP Coop­er and In­sp Bridge­lal vis­it­ed the New York Po­lice De­part­ment, where they saw first­hand how of­fi­cers in the Unit­ed States treat with such cas­es.

“We are im­part­ing that knowl­edge to our coun­ter­parts. We al­so have the train­ing acad­e­my with a new train­ing course called Gen­der Re­spon­sive polic­ing to train the GB of­fi­cers as well as the wider of­fi­cers of the TTPS.”

Guy-Al­leyne said many vic­tims, even af­ter con­tact­ing the po­lice, are fear­ful for their safe­ty, and they are tak­en to shel­ters run by gov­ern­ment agen­cies and NGOs.

“So we have se­cret shel­ters not re­al­ly known to the pub­lic, where vic­tims will be tak­en care of for a pe­ri­od of time be­fore tran­si­tion­ing them back to so­ci­ety.”

Guy-Al­leyne said the TTPS will be ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 16 days of ac­tivism against gen­der-based vi­o­lence, which will see of­fi­cers wear­ing or­ange and sup­port­ing the cause. She said the TTPS will al­so use the pe­ri­od to in­crease “bring­ing a wide aware­ness to the pub­lic to let them know the ser­vices avail­able from the TTPS...so vic­tims and fam­i­ly mem­bers know where to turn to.”