A spe­cialised gang unit has been set up by To­ba­go po­lice to ad­dress the wor­ry­ing rise in mur­ders and gang vi­o­lence on the is­land.

ACP Col­lis Hazel, the head of the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion, re­vealed this and al­so promised a re­duc­tion in mur­ders in 2024 through the ef­forts of this new­ly es­tab­lished unit.

The gang unit’s pri­ma­ry fo­cus is to tar­get gang-re­lat­ed crimes and vi­o­lence, which have con­tributed to the record-high mur­der toll in 2023 of 13 mur­ders.

Hazel em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of hav­ing a well-trained and pre­pared unit to en­force the law and pre­vent gang ri­val­ries from tak­ing hold on the is­land. The unit is al­ready op­er­a­tional and has be­gun its work to ad­dress this “ur­gent prob­lem.”

“We need to en­sure that we es­tab­lish this gang unit so that we can be prop­er­ly trained and ready to en­force any sit­u­a­tion re­lat­ed to gang ri­val­ry,” Hazel told Guardian Me­dia in a re­cent in­ter­view.

Recog­nis­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of re­duc­ing mur­ders, es­pe­cial­ly in re­la­tion to the im­pact on the tourism in­dus­try, he added, “One mur­der is too much in this small is­land of To­ba­go, and there­fore it is im­per­a­tive for my po­si­tion to en­sure that we re­duce mur­ders in all forms.”

He said com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment has been a key fo­cus for the po­lice, with of­fi­cers ac­tive­ly reach­ing out to var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, re­li­gious groups, and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions. Hazel stressed that the im­por­tance of work­ing to­geth­er and build­ing trust to cre­ate a strong part­ner­ship in crime pre­ven­tion ef­forts.

Look­ing ahead, Hazel said he re­mains op­ti­mistic about the fu­ture and the on­go­ing strate­gies to tack­le crime. He men­tioned the es­tab­lish­ment of gang in­tel­li­gence units and oth­er pro­grammes aimed at re­duc­ing crime on the is­land. He said it is ev­i­dent that To­ba­go po­lice of­fi­cers are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of both cit­i­zens and tourists.

In 2023, he said this stake­hold­er en­gage­ment has been a key fo­cus for To­ba­go po­lice.

“We have had our of­fi­cers go­ing out there and en­gag­ing church­es, schools, vil­lage con­certs, town meet­ings. They were meet­ing peo­ple...where­by they were able to sen­si­tise them. Crime fight­ing is every­one’s busi­ness. Al­so, no longer do of­fi­cers sit in our po­lice sta­tions and wait on peo­ple to solve crime.”

He said this ap­proach has led to a crime de­tec­tion rate of 34 per cent.

“Our se­ri­ous crimes are down. But while we con­tin­ue to share that, the pub­lic con­tin­ues to be heav­i­ly vest­ed in the mur­ders be­ing up. That’s what they are in­ter­est­ed in, but se­ri­ous crimes are se­ri­ous crimes and will con­tin­ue to be se­ri­ous crimes. We can­not just be judged by mur­der alone.

“We need to look at that and make a cog­nizant view of the fact that at the end of the day we need to look at the polic­ing holis­ti­cal­ly.”

In all of this, he said To­ba­go po­lice have had some achieve­ments this year.

One of the high­lights of their ef­forts was the suc­cess­ful co­or­di­na­tion of the To­ba­go Car­ni­val, which saw the par­tic­i­pa­tion of over 27,000 peo­ple. The Car­ni­val was hailed as one of the safest car­ni­vals in re­cent years, with no re­port­ed in­ci­dents of crime.