An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­though 2022 is now of­fi­cial­ly the blood­i­est year on record in T&T’s his­to­ry with the mur­der toll hit­ting 555, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob says this still does not war­rant im­ple­ment­ing a lim­it­ed State of Emer­gency (SoE).

He made the com­ment while speak­ing with re­porters at the scene of a triple mur­der in Laven­tille on Tues­day morn­ing, where he ap­pealed to rel­a­tives of the dead men who might be con­sid­er­ing ex­act­ing re­venge to let the au­thor­i­ties do their job and ap­pre­hend the killers.

Ar­riv­ing at Sapodil­la Trace, Snake Val­ley, Laven­tille, short­ly af­ter Cody Pierre, Jevon George and Alex Mor­ton were shot by gun­men as they stood on the road, Ja­cob agreed the scene de­pict­ed not just the loss be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by three moth­ers, but al­so a com­mu­ni­ty’s pain, anger and frus­tra­tion.

Pierre, 24, of Mapp Lands, Laven­tille; George, 23, of Sapodil­la Trace, Laven­tille; and Mor­ton, of Red Hill, Mor­vant, were stand­ing on the road talk­ing around 9 am when gun­men opened fire on the group.

Pierre and George died on the spot, while Mor­ton was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he died around 9.45 am.

As tears rolled down her face, Pierre’s moth­er De­bra Clu­nis-Pierre trem­bled with shock as she looked at her son’s body ly­ing on the ground.

Com­fort­ed by one of her oth­er sons who bare­ly ut­tered a word, she said he had spent the night at her house and had just come out­side “to get a smoke.”

“He just come to buy his goods as usu­al,” she said.

She said she heard the gun­shots dur­ing the at­tack. “It was plen­ty...I was just pray­ing that it wasn’t my son,” she added.

Deny­ing Pierre was in­volved in any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, Clu­nis-Pierre said, “Cody al­ways in a home, ei­ther by me or his girl­friend, or he gone to work. Cody don’t be in this life.”

She said she had cau­tioned her chil­dren enough against “the life.”

“He used to laugh and talk with every­body.”

Pierre had been em­ployed as a jan­i­tor at a pri­ma­ry school in the area.

De­scrib­ing George as sim­i­lar in na­ture to Pierre, in that he would hail every­one in the neigh­bour­hood, Clu­nis-Pierre said they were two good, de­cent, young men.

Com­ment­ing on the crime sit­u­a­tion, she urged gun-tot­ing youths, “Stop this stu­pid­ness they do­ing, as all this un­nec­es­sary crime ain’t call for.”

She said they were dis­tress­ing and dis­rupt­ing life for many res­i­dents who had to go work and school. “They bussing shots all hours of the morn­ing and night,” she not­ed.

She strug­gled to make sense of the killings say­ing: “These is peo­ple who grow up with one an­oth­er. Chil­dren who grow with one an­oth­er, go to school with one an­oth­er...why it had­da reach this far? Why al­lyuh had­da make stu­pid peo­ple make al­lyuh reach this far?”

An el­der­ly man said Laven­tille had been a peace­ful place 10 years ago, but this changed when the guns start­ed to flow in­to the “ghet­to.”

Clu­nis-Pierre dropped her head and low­ered her voice, say­ing: “It scary now,” adding, “A whole set­ta dun­cy-head and un­e­d­u­cat­ed chil­dren just play­ing the fool with it. They wouldn’t go and learn their work but they will pick up a gun nor­mal, nor­mal, nor­mal.”

Asked if the killings would dri­ve her out of Laven­tille, she said yes.

CoP: Don’t take re­venge, let po­lice act

Sym­pa­this­ing with the griev­ing rel­a­tives yes­ter­day as he of­fered con­do­lences fol­low­ing the mur­ders, Ja­cob warned against ex­act­ing re­venge as he as­sured, “We the po­lice will do our part.”

Re­veal­ing he had seen the need for re­venge re­flect­ed in the eyes and on the face of a rel­a­tive of one of the de­ceased men, the com­mis­sion­er said, “I tried my best to con­vince him not to go in that di­rec­tion be­cause what we are hav­ing in these in­stances, is a lot of re­venge and re­tal­i­a­tion when these things oc­cur.”

Yes­ter­day’s triple killings took the num­ber of such to four; with 37 dou­ble mur­ders; and two quadru­ple mur­ders for the year so far.

“The main prob­lem is the use of these firearms...these sub-ma­chine guns and ri­fles that is cre­at­ing may­hem on the streets and with­in our com­mu­ni­ties,” Ja­cob said.

Ja­cob said his vis­it to the scene was in­tend­ed to lend sup­port and en­cour­age­ment to of­fi­cers who were al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in deal­ing with the record num­ber of mur­ders.

He al­so Ja­cob com­mend­ed law­men for the ar­rests of sus­pects want­ed for sev­er­al mur­ders with­in the last few weeks.

He said, “One of the main ways in deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion is ar­rest­ing, charg­ing and tak­ing these per­sons off the streets.”

Ja­cob said while a lot of non-gov­ern­men­tal and faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions were plead­ing with peo­ple to put down the guns, “For those who have al­ready crossed the lines, it is not hav­ing any im­pact on them, so our pur­pose is to en­sure we use the full brunt of the law to deal with them.”

He al­so called on the ju­di­cia­ry to re­con­sid­er how it deals with is­sues of bail.

He said, “The court in giv­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion for bail for mur­der, must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, what is hap­pen­ing in the en­vi­ron­ment, so the de­ci­sion-mak­ing should be com­men­su­rate with what is hap­pen­ing on the streets and with­in our com­mu­ni­ties. We don’t want it to have an­oth­er re­volv­ing door.”

Cit­ing the re­cent in­ci­dent in which two sus­pects who were ex­pect­ed to be charged with mur­der, in re­la­tion to the Sep­tem­ber 19 heist at Pen­ny­wise Plaza, La Ro­maine – had since ab­scond­ed since se­cur­ing bail, the com­mis­sion­er said was a prime ex­am­ple of just how the jus­tice sys­tem need­ed to be re­viewed.

Though the TTPS’s Wit­ness and Vic­tim Sup­port Unit is not ad­e­quate­ly staffed, Ja­cob said the per­son­nel re­main com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing coun­selling and sup­port to the fam­i­lies of de­ceased peo­ple

He said, “The in­ten­tion for the new year is to re­cruit some ad­di­tion­al per­sons, with min­istry ap­proval, to cater for what is hap­pen­ing now in the so­ci­ety.”

He said an ad­di­tion­al po­lice mur­der unit was on­ly set up last week on the bor­der be­tween the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion and the North East­ern Di­vi­sion.

Ja­cob is ex­pect­ed to meet with all the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dents of the TTPS in an emer­gency ses­sion on Thurs­day to brain­storm as they look at ad­di­tion­al ways to curb crime.