Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Fitzger­ald Hinds has re­vealed that al­most half of this coun­try’s mur­ders this year were gang-re­lat­ed killings.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing in Mal­abar on Thurs­day night, Min­is­ter Hinds lament­ed that so far in 2023, 242 peo­ple lost their lives to crime.

In dis­ag­gre­gat­ing the sta­tis­tics, Min­is­ter Hinds said ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the Po­lice Ser­vice, 114 of those mur­ders have been gang-re­lat­ed.

Twen­ty, he said, were due to al­ter­ca­tions, six were at­trib­uted to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, 21 for re­venge killings, 21 dur­ing rob­beries, 31 were drug-re­lat­ed killings, and 29 were still with­out a mo­tive.

Min­is­ter Hinds said killings due to al­ter­ca­tions are of­ten done for friv­o­lous rea­sons.

“I know a fel­la who got shot in my con­stituen­cy for $250.”

Min­is­ter Hinds told the au­di­ence in Mal­abar that an­oth­er con­stituent was wor­ried about los­ing his life over $300 owed to an­oth­er man. The Min­is­ter said he in­ter­vened per­son­al­ly to re­pay the man.

The Min­is­ter said bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and firearm re­trieval are ma­jor el­e­ments of the gov­ern­ment’s crime plan and the TTPS has been man­dat­ed to seize as many guns as pos­si­ble.

He said so far for the year, 280 firearms have been re­cov­ered, many of them mil­i­tary grade.

He told the group of PNM sup­port­ers that change does not come sud­den­ly.

How­ev­er, he said he is heart­ened that the Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice will be re­open­ing sev­er­al youth camps and youth-based ini­tia­tives.