Carisa Lee

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley took cit­i­zens who sup­port and en­cour­age crim­i­nals to task on Tues­day, dur­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Cau­ra Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment.

Dr Row­ley told the in-per­son and view­ing au­di­ence that it was un­ac­cept­able for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to re­main qui­et when they know who has and us­es il­le­gal guns to com­mit crimes.

“It is on­ly when the firearm is dis­charged and killed some­body that you re­act and call up­on the po­lice and the Gov­ern­ment to do some­thing, the some­thing that you do when some­body is killed is to bury the dead,” he added.

The Prime Min­is­ter said up un­til re­cent­ly most of the crim­i­nals on­ly had ac­cess to hand­guns which they could con­ceal but now he said most of the killings are done by peo­ple car­ry­ing as­sault weapons which is very hard to trans­port or op­er­ate and for mem­bers of the pub­lic to miss.

“If you know who it is then for God’s Sake tell the po­lice what they have, where they are and then some­thing will be done…there are too many peo­ple in this coun­try who know who the killers are, who know who the crim­i­nals are, and who are turn­ing a blind eye to it and worst who are en­cour­ag­ing it,” he said.

Dr Row­ley said many of the crim­i­nals live in house­holds and those who may know about their ac­tiv­i­ties such as the moth­er, fa­ther, and neigh­bour are all part of the prob­lem.

This coun­try’s mur­der count cur­rent­ly stands at 122 for the year so far and in No­vem­ber 2023 Head of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rishi Singh re­vealed that Guns were the weapon of choice in 88% of homi­cides in T&T.