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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Tobago gets specialised gang unit to tackle rising violence

by

Elizabeth Gonzales
562 days ago
20231227
ACP Collis Hazel speaks to Guardian Media Ltd during an interview.

ACP Collis Hazel speaks to Guardian Media Ltd during an interview.

ELIZABETH GONZALES

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.


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