Af­ter record­ing its blood­i­est year in his­to­ry with 26 mur­ders in 2024—in­clud­ing the is­land’s first-ever quadru­ple mur­der—To­ba­go is now see­ing a sharp de­cline in killings, with on­ly three mur­ders record­ed for the first half of 2025.

And all three cas­es have been solved. For the same pe­ri­od last year, the is­land had record­ed 11 mur­ders—rep­re­sent­ing a 72 per cent de­cline in 2025 so far.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the progress is no ac­ci­dent. “Yes. Well, I feel good about where we are in com­par­i­son to last year,” Au­gus­tine said. “We ac­tu­al­ly got some no­tice­able shifts from Oc­to­ber last year to present, and it shows that it’s worth the in­vest­ments.”

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) spent mil­lions sup­port­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices on the is­land. Last year, he said, the THA spent $1.4 mil­lion on ve­hi­cles alone to aid na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions—even though na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is not legal­ly un­der the As­sem­bly’s re­mit ac­cord­ing to the THA Act.

The As­sem­bly al­so fund­ed ac­com­mo­da­tion for of­fi­cers and up­grad­ed prison and po­lice fa­cil­i­ties. Au­gus­tine told the cham­ber dur­ing a ple­nary sit­ting that he was pre­pared to be flagged by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al for tak­ing on a cen­tral gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to keep To­bag­o­ni­ans safe.

At that time, he brought a mo­tion to en­ter in­to a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Speak­ing to the Guardian on Mon­day, he said: “What peo­ple may not re­alise is that to get this to hap­pen, the THA spent mil­lions ac­com­mo­dat­ing GEB and ITF in To­ba­go. We have been spend­ing mil­lions on trans­porta­tion, to move of­fi­cers around, move the army around, and to fa­cil­i­tate na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions in what­ev­er way pos­si­ble.”

Au­gus­tine said last year’s mo­tion aimed to for­malise this ap­proach. “It has been work­ing to our ad­van­tage, I think, and this is a good sign.”

He be­lieves To­ba­go’s progress sends a mes­sage to the rest of the coun­try. “It al­so is a sign to our friends and fam­i­ly in Trinidad that all is not lost, and that we can, in fact, re­verse a mur­der­ous habit.”

Look­ing at the da­ta, Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go is in a much bet­ter place than it was this time last year. “We were there last year. We had 24—26—the largest in our his­to­ry. And now we are mid-year, ap­proach­ing the sev­enth month, and we are way be­neath where we were last year at this time. And that is a good sign.”

But he isn’t cel­e­brat­ing yet. “I don’t want us to be­come com­pla­cent at all, be­cause some­times one lit­tle thing could be­come a trig­ger and could cause us to fall back in­to the place where we were at.”

In­stead, the THA plans to keep in­vest­ing in com­mu­ni­ties and pro­grammes that help pre­vent crime. “We in­creased our giv­ing in so­cial ser­vices. We in­creased our pro­grammes at com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment. We in­creased our spend on all the train­ing pro­grammes in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

He added that the THA has al­so made “siz­able in­vest­ments in com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres” and has up­grad­ed sev­er­al hard courts across the is­land. “All of those things are re­al­ly geared to­wards cre­at­ing co­he­sive com­mu­ni­ties so that we have less crime,” he said.

Still, Au­gus­tine ad­mits, “Three is three too many. And so we wish to re­verse that and get to the point where we go through an en­tire year with ze­ro. That’s it.”