Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The end of one year and the be­gin­ning of an­oth­er of­ten brings hope that old prob­lems can be over­come with strength­ened re­solve and a fresh per­spec­tive.

For many peo­ple, crime has been a prob­lem for a long time. With over 600 mur­ders record­ed in 2022—the high­est num­ber of mur­ders in lo­cal his­to­ry—all eyes turned to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for 2023.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was con­firmed in her role in Feb­ru­ary, ap­peared be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee two weeks in­to of­fice and pre­dict­ed that there would be a short-term drop in the mur­der rate by June and a long-term change by De­cem­ber.

As of De­cem­ber 24, there were 555 mur­ders com­pared to 587 for the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

While the drop in mur­ders has been no­tice­able, the dif­fer­ence is not quite as sig­nif­i­cant as ex­pect­ed.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who al­so grad­ed her per­for­mance as Com­mis­sion­er as “ex­cel­lent” when ques­tioned at the TTPS Sports Day in May, de­clined sev­er­al re­quests from Guardian Me­dia for com­ment on her thoughts on the mur­der toll for 2023.

Of­fi­cials in the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, in their re­sponse to the re­quests, said that Hare­wood-Christo­pher pre­ferred to re­serve her com­ments for her end of year state­ment and did not au­tho­rise any of her sub­or­di­nates to re­spond to the ques­tions.

De­spite this si­lence, Hare­wood-Christo­pher claimed sev­er­al crime-fight­ing vic­to­ries through­out the year, in­clud­ing boast­ing of a ze­ro per cent in­crease in the mur­der rate dur­ing her In­de­pen­dence Day toast to the na­tion in Au­gust.

In the face of these as­sur­ances, 2023 was marked with sev­er­al spo­radic bursts of gang vi­o­lence which shook com­mu­ni­ties across T&T with the sheer bru­tal­i­ty and un­pre­dictable na­ture of the at­tacks.

In the case of the mas­sacre of the Pe­terkin sib­lings in the Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma, the re­al­i­ty of life in the coun­try seemed to be one where you could wake up one morn­ing to find an en­tire fam­i­ly mur­dered.

Just as up­set­ting as in­ci­dents of gang war­fare were var­i­ous cas­es of gen­der-based vi­o­lence which some­times had fa­tal con­se­quences.

Gun seizures con­tribute to drop in killings

For 2023, guns con­tin­ued to be the weapon of choice for crim­i­nals, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 478 out of the 555 mur­ders (as of De­cem­ber 21) be­ing com­mit­ted us­ing guns.

For the same pe­ri­od in 2022, 509 mur­ders out of the 588 mur­ders (at the time) were com­mit­ted us­ing guns.

Po­lice said there was an ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11 per cent de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders in­volv­ing guns, with a 13 per cent fig­ure for mur­ders in gen­er­al.

Dur­ing a two-day Cari­com sym­po­sium on crime as a pub­lic health is­sue in April, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­pressed the will­ing­ness of Caribbean lead­ers to com­bat the in­flux of il­le­gal guns from the US and an­nounced the in­ten­tion of re­gion­al lead­ers to ban the use of as­sault ri­fles among civil­ians.

Months lat­er, in Au­gust, of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion raid­ed a house in Uni­ty Lane, Cara­po, where they found two as­sault ri­fles, 41 rounds of high-cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion and uni­forms for po­lice and the reg­i­ment.

How­ev­er one of the largest gun hauls for the year hap­pened in Oc­to­ber, when of­fi­cers of the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF) fol­low­ing up on two months of sur­veil­lance and in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing in a forest­ed part of Can­gre­jal, San­ta Cruz, vis­it­ed a shed where they found 35 guns, in­clud­ing as­sault ri­fles, and over 1,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. Al­so seized in the raid were plas­tic ex­plo­sives. No one was ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the seizure.

Less than a month lat­er, in No­vem­ber, po­lice vis­it­ed a house in St Croix Road, Princes Town, where they found 13 as­sault ri­fles.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of strict anonymi­ty, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said it was pos­si­ble that these var­i­ous seizures through­out the year con­tributed to the de­cline in mur­ders, as it took away the means of some crim­i­nals to com­mit crimes.

“With such large seizures, it’s rea­son­able to in­fer that the crim­i­nals will have to wait to get their fresh stock so it’s a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors.”

He added that since the seizure of the ri­fles, few­er high-cal­i­bre weapons had been found and seized, which he be­lieved was proof that the guns were no longer wide­ly avail­able on the street.

“If you’ve no­ticed, since the seizures of the weapons you haven’t heard much about a par­tic­u­lar gang from St Joseph/Tu­na­puna again,” the of­fi­cer said. Po­lice have been col­lab­o­rat­ing with the US-based Al­co­hol To­bac­co and Firearms (ATF) Bu­reau to help trace the ori­gin of the weapons, as bal­lis­tics test­ing is done to de­ter­mine whether they were in­volved in any crimes.

One of­fi­cer said po­lice have suc­cess­ful­ly traced which state the guns were bought and shipped from in the Unit­ed States and were mak­ing progress in the en­quiry.

The of­fi­cer de­clared the seizure of the weapons a “ma­jor vic­to­ry” for the po­lice, as it demon­strat­ed the in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties of law en­force­ment and their abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to such in­ci­dents.

Progress hard to see for fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims

De­spite these claims of vic­to­ry, how­ev­er, the fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims find it hard to see any sign of a turn­around in the crime sit­u­a­tion.

For the rel­a­tives of six-year-old Kylie Mel­oney, her mur­der was more than a sta­tis­tic or a dot on a board, it was a painful loss with they are con­front­ed with each pass­ing day.

Lit­tle Kylie was mur­dered when gun­men stormed her fam­i­ly’s Blake Av­enue, San­gre Grande home shoot­ing wild­ly ear­ly on the morn­ing of Jan­u­ary 8, mak­ing her one of this year’s first mur­der vic­tims.

Her death sparked out­rage over the reck­less na­ture of crim­i­nals and their dis­re­gard for in­no­cent by­standers as they search for their in­tend­ed tar­get.

To­day, al­most 12 months af­ter Kylie’s mur­der, her grand­moth­er, Tri­cia Mel­oney, says while life con­tin­ues, liv­ing with her grand­daugh­ter’s ab­sence has not got­ten eas­i­er.

“The pain is still here. There are times I just break down know­ing she isn’t there with cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties go­ing on and she isn’t here with me,” Mel­oney told Guardian Me­dia.

Days lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 24, 16-year-old Dar­shan Ram­nauth was gunned down when he went to check on his grand­moth­er af­ter hear­ing gun­shots at their Train­line Vil­lage, St Au­gus­tine home.

The gun­men who fired the shots were still in the area and killed Ram­nauth on sight.

Al­so killed in the at­tack was Geno Shah.

The mur­ders of Ram­nauth and Shah marked the be­gin­ning of a bloody five-month pe­ri­od where six peo­ple were killed in what po­lice sus­pect was a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to in­tim­i­date and ex­tort res­i­dents of Train­line Vil­lage and Free­man Road in St Au­gus­tine.

One of the most bru­tal at­tacks was the mur­der of 21-year-old ven­dor Daniel Ri­ley and the wound­ing of his preg­nant 16-year-old girl­friend in April. Al­so killed in the at­tack was a Port-of-Spain man be­lieved to be one of the gun­men.

While Ri­ley’s girl­friend sur­vived the at­tack, their un­born daugh­ter did not.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in No­vem­ber, Ri­ley’s moth­er, He­len Ri­ley, said in ad­di­tion to cop­ing with the grief of los­ing her son and un­born grand­daugh­ter, she al­so deals with the trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries of the at­tack.

Ri­ley, who was in­side the fam­i­ly’s home, which was made of ship­ping con­tain­ers, when the shoot­ing be­gan, vivid­ly re­called the sound of bul­lets hit­ting the steel walls.

“Some­times when I lie down to sleep, I would re­mem­ber the thing that hap­pened and I won’t be able to go back to sleep,” Ri­ley said.

“It’s like a form of anx­i­ety and when I do think about it, it brings a hol­low­ness in­side that I lose my ap­petite.

“It takes a toll on me. It’s been a few months since this hap­pened and the hurt just isn’t go­ing away.”

Ri­ley, who left the neigh­bour­hood short­ly af­ter the shoot­ing, says she could not con­tin­ue her life in the same area, not on­ly due the emo­tion­al dis­tress it would cause but al­so the safe­ty con­cerns she had about stay­ing be­hind.

She said the trau­ma of the in­ci­dent has caused her to avoid ven­tur­ing out of her home for long pe­ri­ods, which has af­fect­ed her abil­i­ty to find a job.

De­spite this, she is grate­ful to be alive and con­tin­ues to share a strong bond with her son’s girl­friend as she of­fers emo­tion­al sup­port to her.

“She al­ways ask me how I am go­ing. I al­ways ask her how she is go­ing. Every time I talk to her, she re­minds me a lot of Daniel.”

Mul­ti­ple in­ci­dents of gang war­fare

The vi­o­lence in Train­line Vil­lage even­tu­al­ly came to a stop af­ter a po­lice in­ter­ven­tion led by for­mer ACP North Wayne Mys­tar, which al­so in­clud­ed so­cial sup­port to res­i­dents in need.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in ear­ly De­cem­ber, Mys­tar, who now heads the po­lice Spe­cial Sup­port Unit, said crit­i­cal to the restora­tion of peace was the work of the Po­lice Youth Club, which steered youths away from crime. He al­so not­ed that the com­mu­ni­ty, which con­tained sev­er­al derelict struc­tures, was left vul­ner­a­ble to crim­i­nal at­tacks.

How­ev­er, there were var­i­ous oth­er flare-ups of gang vi­o­lence across the east-west cor­ri­dor.

Be­tween ear­ly and mid-Ju­ly a bout of vi­o­lence be­tween war­ring fac­tions in Mor­vant, Mal­ick, San Juan and Aranguez led to the deaths of three peo­ple and the fire­bomb­ing of a house.

The vi­o­lence, which was be­lieved to be reprisals af­ter the mur­der of an im­pris­oned gang leader’s rel­a­tive, came to an end af­ter a se­ries of tar­get­ed op­er­a­tions and joint army-po­lice pa­trols dubbed Op­er­a­tion Nis­si by head of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Mervyn Ed­wards.

An­oth­er bloody gang war, how­ev­er, took off short­ly af­ter in Care­nage in late Ju­ly and con­tin­ued in­to the mid­dle of Au­gust.

With three sep­a­rate dou­ble mur­ders, of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion were kept busy as they stepped up pa­trols to re­store or­der in parts of Scor­pi­on Al­ley and Up­per Abbe Pou­jade Street.

But af­ter vi­o­lence died down in Care­nage, an­oth­er se­ries of mur­ders and shoot­ings in Ari­ma caught the at­ten­tion of the pub­lic.

This spate of vi­o­lence even­tu­al­ly cul­mi­nat­ed with the mas­sacre of four sib­lings, Faith Pe­terkin, 10, Ar­i­an­na Pe­terkin, 14, Shain Pe­terkin, 17, and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19, on Sep­tem­ber 21 as they slept in their La Re­treat, Ari­ma home.

The sib­lings’ deaths stirred a na­tion­wide out­cry and high­light­ed how swift­ly mur­ders could hap­pen and the fact that sleep­ing chil­dren were not spared the wrath of crim­i­nals.

Po­lice in the North­ern Di­vi­sion ini­ti­at­ed an in-depth re­sponse with dif­fer­ent units mo­bilised to track down the killers.

In ear­ly Oc­to­ber, of­fi­cers of the Ari­ma CID tracked three men to a house in San Poui Road, Heights of Aripo, Ari­ma, where they were found with an AK-47, a pis­tol and sev­er­al rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Two of the men, Jodel Noel, 24 and Je­lani Rivers, were charged with the mur­ders of the sib­lings.

An in­creased po­lice pres­ence and reg­u­lar pa­trols in re­sponse to the mur­ders, even af­ter Noel and Rivers were charged, led to a re­turn of calm in the Heights of Gua­napo.

How­ev­er, gang vi­o­lence would ap­pear again with a se­ries of mur­ders in Bel­mont and east Port-of-Spain be­tween late Oc­to­ber and late No­vem­ber.

The war be­tween the Sixx and Sev­en gangs is be­lieved to have be­gun with the mur­der of Nes­ta Sam­my, alias ‘Pap­py’, a re­put­ed un­der­world fig­ure in the carpark of Su­per­pharm, Diego Mar­tin, on Oc­to­ber 29.

On that same night, four men, Bran­don Forde, 23, Chivon Clarke, 26, Bri­an Pad­more, 27 and Keron Moore, 31, were gunned down as they stood at the cor­ner of Smart Place and Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road in Bel­mont.

How­ev­er, one of­fi­cer said de­spite the preva­lence of gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders and shoot­ings this year, the po­lice made progress in dis­man­tling gangs and dis­rupt­ing their ac­tiv­i­ties.

Re­fer­ring to the as­sign­ing of gang units to each Homi­cide Re­gion in Trinidad and To­ba­go to max­imise cov­er­age and ef­fi­cien­cies, while al­so keep­ing track of gangs as they mi­grat­ed out of Port-of-Spain in­to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties.

“What we’ve been see­ing is the gangs are leav­ing Port-of- Spain and head­ing out on the east-west cor­ri­dor to the North­ern North Di­vi­sion (Ari­ma, La Hor­quet­ta, Cu­mu­to) and North-Cen­tral (St Joseph, Tu­na­puna, Arou­ca, Bon Air),” the of­fi­cer said.

“We di­vid­ed the gang units up to cov­er the Homi­cide Re­gions I (Port-of-Spain and West­ern Di­vi­sion), Re­gion II (North-Cen­tral, North­ern and East­ern) and Re­gion III (Cen­tral, South-West­ern and South­ern), so the man­agers would have their own gang comp­stat meet­ings to ob­serve the move­ment of the gangs and pay at­ten­tion to which fig­ures are op­er­at­ing in which neigh­bour­hoods.”

The of­fi­cer not­ed that ad­di­tion­al ex­er­cis­es in pris­ons al­so yield­ed some re­sults, as it led to the seizure of var­i­ous con­tra­band items which dis­rupt­ed the ac­tiv­i­ties of some im­pris­oned gang lead­ers, who some­times gave di­rec­tives even while be­hind bars.

An­oth­er se­nior of­fi­cer not­ed that one of the chal­lenges in keep­ing track of gangs was the fact that some gang­sters switched sides in re­sponse to changes in con­di­tions and struc­tures.

“It’s about what they (the gang­sters) can get out of a giv­en arrange­ment.

“If a leader is killed or locked up and they can no longer ben­e­fit, they will change loy­al­ty, which is a chal­lenge in keep­ing track of where they are and how to tar­get them.

“It’s not like the struc­ture in places like Los An­ge­les or Chica­go, where there are very clear, rigid bound­aries in place where a gang mem­ber can and can­not go, the bound­aries in Trinidad are clear but it tends to be more flu­id.”

Me­di­a­tors on com­mu­ni­ty front­lines

While ‘hard’ polic­ing ini­tia­tives like pa­trols, road­blocks, raids and in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing form the back­bone of any re­sponse to crime, po­lice agree that a com­mu­ni­ty-based ap­proach is need­ed to en­act any long-term change.

This means pre­vent­ing crimes be­fore they can hap­pen by pro­vid­ing peo­ple with the nec­es­sary tools to pre­vent small dis­agree­ments from es­ca­lat­ing to blood­shed.

It can al­so in­clude the in­ter­ven­tion of po­lice youth clubs and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions to so­cialise chil­dren, pre­vent­ing them from falling in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty in the first place.

This work is led by me­di­a­tors like Jene­ice De Coteau, who have worked with the po­lice in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties to of­fer their skills in con­flict res­o­lu­tion to re­duce vi­o­lence.

De Coteau, who is the se­nior me­di­a­tor at the Com­mu­ni­ty Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion Cen­tre (CCRC) and the founder of the Of­fi­ci­um Train­ing Ltd, says iden­ti­fy­ing and steer­ing at-risk youths away from an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour can save the coun­try from se­ri­ous prob­lems lat­er on.

Re­fer­ring to a pri­ma­ry school car­a­van this year where a young boy, whose fa­ther was shot by po­lice in front of him, con­front­ed an of­fi­cer, De Coteau said the cor­rect ap­proach to such in­ter­ac­tions could save the child’s life.

“One of the of­fi­cers re­port­ed that a young boy walked up to him with tears in his eyes and he said, ‘Sir po­lice shoot my dad­dy… You was in the sta­tion?’ and the of­fi­cer be­ing trained said ‘No son I wasn’t there’

“You may think that sit­u­a­tion is very ba­sic but if we don’t catch that lit­tle boy, he’s go­ing to grow up to be a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old that will be a re­al prob­lem for the coun­try,” she said.

“It can go two ways, he can ei­ther think ‘It was your fault, you killed my fa­ther’ or he could be ask­ing for help.

“Ei­ther way the pur­pose of the CCRC and the in­ter­ven­tion is to stop sit­u­a­tions like that from es­ca­lat­ing in­to some­thing that none of us want.”

De Coteau said such an ap­proach to crime-fight­ing would not yield re­sults overnight but would lay the ba­sic ground­work for a long-term in­ter­ven­tion and urged the pub­lic and part­ner agen­cies to be pa­tient in ex­pect­ing to see re­sults.

These strate­gies, she said, would be mean­ing­ful but would al­so re­quire the pub­lic to re-think their own at­ti­tudes and be­hav­iour to fos­ter a more pos­i­tive so­ci­ety.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist: Too ear­ly to tell if mur­der rate de­creas­ing

For most peo­ple, a high an­nu­al mur­der fig­ure does not give re­as­sur­ances about the state of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

But sim­ply com­par­ing the num­ber of mur­ders be­tween two years is not enough to ad­e­quate­ly gauge whether progress in crime-fight­ing is be­ing made.

In light of this, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad says it may be too ear­ly to tell whether this year’s de­cline in mur­ders may be the be­gin­ning of an over­all down­ward trend or a sim­ple fluc­tu­a­tion.

Dr Seep­er­sad, how­ev­er, not­ed that it was en­cour­ag­ing to see the ap­proach tak­en by Cari­com lead­ers dur­ing their sym­po­sium in April to tack­le crime as a pub­lic health is­sue.

He said there was da­ta from oth­er ter­ri­to­ries to sug­gest that such an ap­proach would make a dif­fer­ence and said ini­tia­tives like the Gang Re­duc­tion and Com­mu­ni­ty Em­pow­er­ment (GRACE) pro­gramme in T&T and the Youth Re­silience, In­clu­sion and Em­pow­er­ment (Y-RIE) pro­gramme from US Aid went be­yond ar­rests and worked to­wards re-so­cial­is­ing and re­train­ing youths.

Re­fer­ring to work done by US Aid in their youth in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme this year, Seep­er­sad said parental train­ing ini­tia­tives could go a long way to­wards im­prov­ing so­cial con­di­tions.

“So, we know where the at­ten­tion needs to be tar­get­ed, what is re­al­ly re­quired is de­sign­ing in­ter­ven­tions that fit those par­tic­u­lar set­tings and putting them in place,” Seep­er­sad said.

“Even if it’s some­thing like parental train­ing and all of that, giv­ing par­ents the skills to know how to deal with their chil­dren that is some­thing that by and large there is­nt ac­cess to that in terms of train­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The eco­nom­ic hard­ships peo­ple face re­al­ly re­quire them to work and they don’t have the time re­al­ly to be with the chil­dren to su­per­vise them and help with the so­cial de­vel­op­ment, so that re­al­ly won’t auger well in terms of child so­cial­i­sa­tion.”