Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) in charge of Op­er­a­tions and Gold Com­man­der for the State of Emer­gency (SoE), Suzette Mar­tin, in­sists the SoE is work­ing and has had some suc­cess­es notwith­stand­ing con­tin­ued homi­cides.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, there were 96 mur­ders for the year thus far, com­pared to 106 for the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions sent to her through the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, Mar­tin dis­missed con­cerns that the on­go­ing SoE was in­ef­fec­tive, not­ing that it was “sim­ply not ac­cu­rate.”

“The State of Emer­gency is work­ing—it is dis­rupt­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, re­strict­ing move­ment and al­low­ing us to act with greater speed and au­thor­i­ty.

“The pub­lic may not see every suc­cess, but the re­sults are there: ar­rests, firearm seizures and the dis­man­tling of crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions.

“We will not mea­sure suc­cess based on iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents. We mea­sure it by the sus­tained pres­sure we are ap­ply­ing and the long-term im­pact on crime.”

Mar­tin added that the TTPS re­mains in con­trol, not­ing that of­fi­cers were “fo­cused, re­lent­less,” and pre­pared to con­tin­ue tak­ing the fight to crim­i­nals.

Re­spond­ing to the mur­der of An­tho­ny Leroy Fran­cis and the wound­ing of his preg­nant girl­friend dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing at­tack at his Moo­nan Road, Waller­field, home yes­ter­day, Mar­tin de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “brazen and un­ac­cept­able.”

She promised a strong re­sponse. “The North­ern Di­vi­sion North will see an im­me­di­ate surge in po­lice pres­ence—more tar­get­ed op­er­a­tions and greater in­tel­li­gence-led in­ter­ven­tions,” she said.

“We are al­ready pur­su­ing strong leads and we in­tend to bring those re­spon­si­ble to jus­tice.”

In a di­rect re­sponse to those break­ing the law, Mar­tin al­so vowed that there was no “safe space for crim­i­nals,” vow­ing that they would be found, whether in pub­lic or in pri­vate homes.

She said the con­tin­u­a­tion of vi­o­lence, even dur­ing an SoE, was not tak­en light­ly and stressed that crim­i­nals would not be al­lowed to un­der­mine the ef­forts by law en­force­ment.

“What you are see­ing is a di­rect re­sponse from crim­i­nals who are un­der sus­tained pres­sure. The TTPS has in­creased op­er­a­tions, dis­rupt­ed net­works, and re­moved weapons from the streets—and that pres­sure is forc­ing des­per­ate re­ac­tions.

“We are not back­ing down. In fact, these in­ci­dents strength­en our re­solve. Our op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue, and they will in­ten­si­fy.”