Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he is pleased to hear re­ports of crime-fight­ing suc­cess­es, as he ral­lied be­hind the po­lice in their work.

He said the progress be­ing made was the good news the chil­dren and cit­i­zens of this coun­try de­served as he hailed “a light at the end of the tun­nel” in the fight against crime.

Dr Row­ley made the re­marks dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s In­de­pen­dence Day toast to the na­tion at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Row­ley was flanked by Deputy and As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice at the Solomon McLeod Au­di­to­ri­um, where he ad­dressed a packed hall con­sist­ing of ac­tive and re­tired of­fi­cers.

Re­fer­ring to sta­tis­tics re­port­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher on Wednes­day who not­ed a ze­ro per cent in­crease in the mur­der rate and an 11 per cent drop in se­ri­ous crimes for 2023 thus far, Row­ley said these fig­ures were en­cour­ag­ing.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, there were 392 mur­ders for the year thus far which was on par with the fig­ures for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Not­ing his time as a politi­cian and how ap­pre­ci­a­tion from the pub­lic could be scarce, Row­ley said while the work of po­lice of­fi­cers was not recog­nised as of­ten as it should, their ef­forts and sac­ri­fices were cru­cial in pre­serv­ing so­ci­ety. This was why he said he wel­comed the news about the fight against crime.

“It is good news to hear that at least on this oc­ca­sion we can see some light at the end of the tun­nel against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

“If the ef­forts are sus­tained, if the new meth­ods are utilised and if we gen­uine­ly be­lieve we have the in­tegri­ty to con­front the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, at the end of the day the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will pre­vail and this pe­ri­od of chal­lenge will be a pe­ri­od to be looked up­on and say there were times we were chal­lenged but in­deed we did suc­ceed,” he said.

He added, “Our chil­dren de­serve no less and our cit­i­zens are de­pend­ing on the po­lice ser­vice.”

Row­ley said the job of crime-fight­ing was be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult giv­en the types of new tech­nol­o­gy avail­able.

Re­fer­ring to the seizure of “ghost guns” which were man­u­fac­tured us­ing 3-D print­ing tech­nol­o­gy at a house in Ca­paro this week, Row­ley said the po­lice were chal­lenged by crim­i­nals who were be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly re­source­ful.

He said while polic­ing was not for the “faint of heart”, all arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices could ex­pect the fullest sup­port of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in ar­rest­ing crime.

“As chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, what­ev­er the lev­el of crim­i­nal con­duct is in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the one thing you can rest as­sured is the Gov­ern­ment will make avail­able to the po­lice ser­vice all rea­son­able re­sources and we ex­pect you will use these tools in the fight against crim­i­nals.

“I want you (po­lice) to have the as­sur­ance that as you go out there, you’re not alone, you are in fact sup­port­ed by the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple of T&T.”

Ref­er­enc­ing the say­ing that “crime doesn’t pay” Row­ley said it was an un­for­tu­nate re­al­i­ty that some peo­ple ben­e­fit­ted from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

He said that while fail­ure was an in­evitable part of hu­man­i­ty, the of­fi­cers should not be daunt­ed by the chal­lenges ahead and reaf­firmed his sup­port to law en­force­ment while call­ing on the pub­lic to do the same.

CoP: Crime tak­ing place main­ly in one di­vi­sion

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher, dur­ing her ad­dress, ac­knowl­edged that while the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to com­bat crime has been ques­tioned by the pub­lic, sev­er­al crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives were yield­ing ben­e­fits.

She re­in­forced the sta­tis­tics she pre­sent­ed dur­ing a po­lice me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day.

Yes­ter­day, she in­sist­ed that proof of the de­cline in mur­ders was ev­i­dent point­ing to fig­ures ob­tained from four of the ten po­lice di­vi­sions.

“The rate is mar­gin­al­ly high­er in five di­vi­sions and the over­all in­crease we have ex­pe­ri­enced is be­ing dri­ven large­ly by one di­vi­sion, the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

“I am ex­treme­ly pleased to re­port, how­ev­er, that de­spite the ap­pre­hen­sion, the TTPS has been mak­ing sub­stan­tial progress in its crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

“As of the be­gin­ning of Au­gust we have seen some sig­nif­i­cant re­sults and I can say from now the com­par­a­tive homi­cide rate has re­duced from an in­crease of 10 per cent, we are now at an in­crease of ze­ro of the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od,” she said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so re­port­ed that there was an 11 per cent drop in se­ri­ous crimes and a de­crease in wound­ings and shoot­ings by 67 per cent.

She said while the po­lice were firm in their re­solve to en­sure pub­lic safe­ty, she was wary of un­re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tions from the pub­lic, not­ing that co-op­er­a­tion from cit­i­zens was key to the suc­cess of any an­ti-crime pro­gramme.

“The re­al­i­ty is that even though the re­sources of the po­lice were to be dou­bled or tripled to­mor­row, it still does not mean that the po­lice will be every­where ...

“What is need­ed in our so­ci­ety to pro­duce the re­lief that is be­ing de­mand­ed is to re­move the de­sire and dis­po­si­tion of per­sons to com­mit crimes and that’s not a job for the po­lice alone.

“That’s the job for the whole of a civilised so­ci­ety.

“The home, the school, the church and the com­mu­ni­ty.

“A so­ci­ety where we in­stil in our cit­i­zens a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to right and wrong where we train young peo­ple to have re­spect,” the Com­mis­sion­er added.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so re­spond­ed to crit­ics of the po­lice and her of­fice not­ing that such peo­ple should use pub­lic plat­forms to raise aware­ness among the pub­lic.

She added that such com­ments could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences and pos­si­bly un­der­mine the au­thor­i­ty of the po­lice.