As the clock winds down on yet an­oth­er year, much na­tion­al at­ten­tion is fo­cused on count­ing, not the fi­nal hours and min­utes of 2023, but the ris­ing body count.

It is a grim num­bers game of analy­ses and com­par­isons at the end of yet an­oth­er 12-month cy­cle of dead­ly vi­o­lence and failed in­ter­ven­tions.

The num­ber that looms large is 605, the mur­der count at the end of the dead­liest year on record in this coun­try—2022. The fear shared by many was that it could have been ex­ceed­ed, al­though that is now un­like­ly with just a day left in this year.

Still, this year will end as the sec­ond dead­liest in T&T’s his­to­ry. An ex­am­i­na­tion of the num­bers un­der­scores the ex­tent to which the killers still have the up­per hand.

Mur­ders have crossed 500 on two oth­er oc­ca­sions this decade—538 in 2019 and 516 in 2018. A re­view of the num­bers record­ed since 2013 shows a steady rise in mur­ders, ex­cept in 2020, when COVID-19 re­stric­tions kept the fig­ures at 396.

By these num­bers, it is easy to plot a steady up­ward tra­jec­to­ry since the late 90s, dri­ven by gang vi­o­lence and gun crime.

It is hard to fath­om that there was a time, way back in the 1980s, when there were few­er than 50 mur­ders in any giv­en year.

The up­surge in the decades since then is due, in part, to T&T’s ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion in the part of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean most im­pact­ed by transna­tion­al crime.

The lat­est Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­DOC) Glob­al Study on Homi­cide de­tails the “dense ecosys­tem of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal groups, in­clud­ing hun­dreds of drug traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, mafia syn­di­cates, gangs and mili­tia, that al­ter­nate­ly co-op­er­ate, col­lude and com­pete for the con­trol of il­le­gal mar­kets.”

This na­tion has be­come one of the most fer­tile breed­ing grounds for crim­i­nal gangs in the Caribbean and the in­creased blood­shed at year-end is linked to re­newed gang war­fare in Port-of-Spain and along the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

At last count, there were more than 130 crim­i­nal gangs across T&T and they have been en­gag­ing in un­prece­dent­ed lev­els of homi­cides and vi­o­lence, giv­ing cre­dence to warn­ings in a Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) re­port com­piled more than a year ago.

In this fi­nal week of 2023, the quadru­ple mur­ders com­mit­ted in broad day­light on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, St Au­gus­tine, and shoot­ing in­ci­dents in Ari­ma and Diego Mar­tin be­tween Thurs­day and yes­ter­day, are the lat­est ev­i­dence of the younger, more vi­o­lent gang lead­ers en­gag­ing in ex­treme forms of vi­o­lence that the SSA warned about.

As larg­er gangs splin­ter in­to small­er, more vi­o­lent fac­tions, in­no­cent by­standers be­come col­lat­er­al dam­age, as crim­i­nals seek to take out their ri­vals for con­trol of hu­man, weapons and drug traf­fick­ing and oth­er un­der­world ac­tiv­i­ties.

Dri­ving the lat­est up­surge in vi­o­lence are mem­bers and af­fil­i­ates of Ras­ta City and its crim­i­nal spin-off, Sixx. They are now bit­ter ri­vals fight­ing for crim­i­nal turf.

On the oth­er side of the equa­tion, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the in­tel­li­gence and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies that make up this coun­try’s law en­force­ment in­fra­struc­ture can­not stem the blood­shed and re­duce the car­nage.

In the mid­dle are cit­i­zens des­per­ate for peace and pro­tec­tion as the mur­der count con­tin­ues to rise.

The fer­vent hope, how­ev­er, is that 2024 will bring the re­duc­tion in the vi­o­lence and blood­shed that many of us have been pray­ing for.