Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams is challenging his subordinates to take 800 illegal firearms off the streets in 2015, as they seek to drive the murder rate down. Speaking to Southern Division officers on Tuesday night at an awards and dinner function, held at at the Petrotrin Sports Club, Pointe-a-Pierre, Williams said firearms accounted for 302 of the 403 murders committed in 2014. This despite police seizing 585 firearms last year.
He said while the T&T Police Service (TTPS) boasted of a reduction in serious crimes, the murder rate had overshadowed that achievement. Rolling out the TTPS strategy, Williams said each division had a target for the number of firearms it must remove from the streets. Port-of-Spain, Northern, Central and Southern divisions were mandated to seize at least 100 illegal firearms each by the end of 2015.
“As we enter 2015, it is critical for us to revisit all that we have done. We are overshadowed by the issue of murders. We recorded 403 in 2014. Even though a small reduction from 2013, that is not enough. The society demands an obvious big drop in the total number of murders in Trinidad and Tobago and in order to deliver on that, we have to focus on the things of greatest importance to driving murders down.”
“Firearms are used in 75 per cent of all murders and if we take the firearms out of the hands of the criminals, we should see a drop in murders. This should be a clear correlation, even though it may be a negative correlation. As one goes up, another one is supposed to come down and that is our intention. So if we could lift the firearm removal level, we should be able to see the murder rate dropping,” Williams said.
Fear factor
Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of crime, Carlton Alleyne, told officers that their job was to ensure that citizens felt safe. He said the successive 400-plus murder tolls had left the country in the grip of fear.
“The police service endured a challenging 2014. Despite the fact that we were able to reduce most categories of crime, are our constituents feeling safe? Homicides have been plaguing us as a service and as a country, and I think despite the fact that we have been able to reduce most of our categories of crime, we struggle with homicide and our constituents are not feeling safe.
“The police service is being judged, in my opinion, with respect to the amount of homicides that are occurring and what is the police doing about it? We have been working very hard, we have had 407 homicides in 2013 and we have had 403 in 2014. It is not much of a difference, but we will continue to work hard in 2015 and reduce crime even more.”
Alleyne also apologised for errant officers who he said had strained the relationship between the public and the police. He said in order for the country to achieve a reduction in homicides, “there needs to be a strong partnership between the police and citizens against criminals.”