Trinidad Top Cop: Murder count could have been over 1,000

(Trinidad Guardian) Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says de­spite his achieve­ments over the last year in of­fice, mur­ders and the fear of crime con­tin­ues to be his biggest chal­lenges.

The mur­der count for this year has equalled the last year’s fig­ure with the lat­est killing tak­ing place on Thurs­day night in Mor­vant.

Grif­fith ac­knowl­edged that had it not been for the good work of his of­fi­cers, it could have been worse.

“There have been some sit­u­a­tions where based on prop­er in­tel­li­gence and prop­er op­er­a­tions some­times over 10-15 per­sons could have been killed in one night,” said Grif­fith.

“Per­sons will try to crit­i­cise the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice based on what you would have seen with the homi­cide rate, but I can as­sure you that the homi­cide rate in re­la­tion to the pop­u­la­tion if you look at the num­ber of firearms we have and the oth­er sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors that we en­counter on a dai­ly ba­sis. The homi­cide rate could be well have been over 1,000 per an­num,” said Grif­fith.

“If had not been for the hard work, the ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty and per­form­ing be­yond the call of du­ty where po­lice of­fi­cers have put their lives on the line to en­sure they can ac­tu­al­ly re­duce the homi­cides that were tak­ing place.”

He said while there had been crit­ics of the ac­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice un­der his watch, his of­fi­cers had been act­ing in the in­ter­est of the na­tion’s se­cu­ri­ty.

He point­ed to the re­cent out­cry fol­low­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion in Las Cuevas as an ex­am­ple.

“There was a very suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion that took place re­cent­ly in Las Cuevas, had it not been for that there would have prob­a­bly been an es­ca­la­tion in homi­cides. But the main pho­to­graph be­ing tak­en was of a la­dy’s door be­ing bro­ken in­to rather than the fact that we did could have pre­vent­ed oth­er homi­cides from tak­ing place,” said Grif­fith.

On Thurs­day, dur­ing a mas­sive sweep in the com­mu­ni­ty once con­trolled by mur­dered gang leader Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres, po­lice de­tained 22 peo­ple and seized guns, am­mu­ni­tion.

Grif­fith said there were sev­er­al chal­lenges which hin­dered the po­lice’s fight to ar­rest the mur­der rate; in­clud­ing the pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion of the Firearms Act which saw sev­er­al peo­ple re­leased less than a year af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed and the fact that many pris­on­ers were al­lowed to mas­ter­mind hits from be­hind bars.

The Firearms Act was amend­ed in Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly and in­creas­es the penal­ty for of­fend­ers—up to life im­pris­on­ment on the third con­vic­tion.

Pris­on­ers or­dered 50 killings

The Com­mis­sion­er said at least 50 mur­ders had be con­duct­ed fol­low­ing or­ders sent from the na­tion’s pris­ons.

“There have been a num­ber of dif­fer­ent fac­tors that we can look at, that it is much more than just the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. The ac­cess to pris­on­ers call­ing shots from the in­side. Over 50 homi­cides this year, through in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, have been re­lat­ed to per­sons in pris­ons call­ing hits on per­sons,” said Grif­fith, who said there would soon be a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Pris­ons Ser­vice to cur­tail such acts.

Grif­fith said de­spite the chal­lenges, as head of the or­gan­i­sa­tion he had been mak­ing moves every week to im­prove the Po­lice Ser­vice.

He said over 75 poli­cies had put in place with the es­tab­lish­ment of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team, and the re­duc­tion of the over­time pay­ments from over $300 mil­lion to $126 mil­lion as some of his achieve­ments in the past year.

Con­verse­ly, Grif­fith said in his first year had not been prop­er­ly able to bud­get for his plans and was look­ing for­ward to do­ing so in his sec­ond year.

He al­so laud­ed the train­ing work done for of­fi­cers so that a Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit can be es­tab­lished in the com­ing year.

Grif­fith not­ed that about 40 mur­ders a year are con­nect­ed to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

He said that with the es­tab­lish­ment of this unit more vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence may be will­ing to come for­ward with their re­ports with­out fear of em­bar­rass­ment or stig­ma­ti­sa­tion.

Grif­fith said he aimed to re­duce the mur­der toll by 10 per cent an­nu­al­ly for the next decade, which would halve the mur­der count in five years.

How­ev­er, he said that this would not nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to a pub­lic per­cep­tion that crime is down.

“Crime re­duc­tion and the per­cep­tion and fear of crime are two dif­fer­ent things. In 1999, there was a cer­tain Prime Min­is­ter where the homi­cide rate was 95. And the coun­try thought that he was fail­ing be­cause they still spoke about how he threw his hands in the air. And the homi­cide rate was less than 100, so it meant that even though the homi­cide rate was low the per­cep­tion and fear of crime was still there,” said Grif­fith, “My op­er­a­tion is two-fold, it is to re­duce crime but to al­so take away the per­cep­tion and fear of crime.”

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Grif­fith al­so show­cased the brand new po­lice badge, sim­i­lar to those used by po­lice of­fi­cers in the US, which would be added to of­fi­cer’s uni­form in the com­ing year.