KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons ap­proach­ing, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions), Suzette Mar­tin, is as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that it is safe to shop and at­tend pub­lic events.

De­spite mur­ders and vi­o­lence con­tin­u­ing dur­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE), Mar­tin said long-stand­ing pat­terns show pe­ri­ods of high­er and low­er mur­der ac­tiv­i­ty. She was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a walk­a­bout with of­fi­cers from the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion, the lead­er­ship of the South West­ern Di­vi­sion, and mem­bers of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions yes­ter­day.

Yes­ter­day, the TTPS re­port­ed a 41 per cent de­crease in mur­ders from 2024 for the same pe­ri­od, a re­duc­tion of 227 mur­ders. Dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary de­bate on Oc­to­ber 31, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said T&T had ben­e­fit­ed from a re­duc­tion in mur­der and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes as a re­sult of the SoE. Last week, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­port­ed 4,494 of­fences be­tween May and Sep­tem­ber 2025, with 1,504 of them de­tect­ed. He pro­vid­ed a month­ly break­down show­ing fluc­tu­a­tions in re­port­ed crimes and said the fig­ures would guide the roll­out of the gov­ern­ment’s ten-point crime plan.

“Over the years, there is a pat­tern where you have mur­ders and then you don’t have much. Then, you have mur­ders ris­ing again. Yes, we have been able to man­age the mur­der rate at this time, but it does not mean that we will not have, maybe, one or two from time to time. We are work­ing with the pub­lic. We are work­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty and the stake­hold­ers to see if we can make Trinidad the place we want it to be,” Mar­tin said.

Mar­tin has been vis­it­ing sev­er­al di­vi­sions as the TTPS rolls out Op­er­a­tion Fes­tive Shield for the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons. She not­ed that shop­ping spiked dur­ing Christ­mas, while Car­ni­val drew high­er pub­lic en­gage­ment, and urged peo­ple to be mind­ful of their sur­round­ings.

She said, “We have some safe­ty tips that we are shar­ing with peo­ple: how to pro­tect your home, how to pro­tect your fam­i­ly, and how to pro­tect your­self while shop­ping, so we will be giv­ing out these brochures to peo­ple so they can feel com­fort­able shop­ping over the Christ­mas pe­ri­od. Yes, we know we have crime in dif­fer­ent ar­eas, but we are still ask­ing you to pro­tect your­self.”

Mar­tin said the TTPS is do­ing its best to man­age high-risk ar­eas and hoped that, in the fu­ture, the pub­lic would re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty.

Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj said Op­er­a­tion Fes­tive Shield aligned with good gov­er­nance, as peo­ple want­ed to feel safe on the streets.