As the end of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) on April 13 looms, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin says the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will con­tin­ue its re­lent­less ef­forts to sus­tain peace and se­cu­ri­ty af­ter the pe­ri­od.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s T&T Po­lice Ser­vice me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Ben­jamin said there had been a de­cline in vi­o­lent crimes since the year be­gan.

Se­nior of­fi­cials yes­ter­day claimed the ma­jor­i­ty of the 94 mur­ders com­mit­ted up to 4 pm yes­ter­day were not main­ly fu­elled by gun or gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty but rather by drugs and per­son­al al­ter­ca­tions.

Ben­jamin said, “When we look at our vi­o­lent crimes, we are see­ing a 33 per cent re­duc­tion.”

Look­ing back at the 1,151 in­ci­dents of vi­o­lent crimes record­ed in 2024, com­pared to 773 this year, he said, “We have seen a tremen­dous re­duc­tion in the num­ber of rob­beries, where in 2024, we had 622. Now, we have on­ly had 360. And in terms of our mur­ders thus far, we have had just about 94 mur­ders against what we had last year, of just over 127.”

Re­fer­ring to this as a slow pro­gres­sion in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion, he said they still were not sat­is­fied and ad­mit­ted, “There is still a lot that needs to be done.”

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as Ben­jamin, act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions and Gold Com­man­der in charge of se­cu­ri­ty for the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Curt Si­mon, said 4,275 op­er­a­tions had been con­duct­ed be­tween De­cem­ber 30, 2024 and yes­ter­day and had led to the re­cov­ery of over 165 firearms and 3,564 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion.

He said 48 peo­ple had been de­tained at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre on SoE Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders, with 12 still out­stand­ing.

Si­mon said DCP, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, was lead­ing dri­ve to charge sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple cur­rent­ly in cus­tody.

Among the charges be­ing looked at are con­spir­a­cy to mur­der; var­i­ous gang-re­lat­ed of­fences; and at least one count of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

Agree­ing there was a down­ward trend in the num­ber of homi­cides, he said this was still no cause to cel­e­brate.

De­spite this, he added, “Our fig­ures are show­ing to us that the gang mo­tive is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the lead­ing mo­tive right now for the mur­ders. It is high­ly com­pa­ra­ble with that of drugs and al­ter­ca­tions.”

No con­cerns with EBC ear­ly vot­ers list

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns that the pub­li­ca­tion of a list con­tain­ing the names and ad­dress­es of pri­ma­ry vot­ers by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) could pose a se­cu­ri­ty risk for mem­bers of law en­force­ment, as they could be eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied, DCP Si­mon dis­missed this is­sue.

He said the long-held prac­tice was part of the law, adding, “We do not have any con­cerns.”

CoP in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­u­ing

On the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to sus­pend­ed CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Ben­jamin said,

“The TTPS has con­clud­ed our part that we had to do, and we are at the point where we are go­ing back to the DPP to have fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion as to the next step.”

No word yet on miss­ing am­mo

Re­gard­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of 25,000 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion from the T&T Reg­i­ment Cu­mu­to Bar­racks in Feb­ru­ary, Ben­jamin said, “That in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues.”

The rounds, which were dis­cov­ered miss­ing dur­ing an au­dit, had been moved from an un­der­ground bunker to an­oth­er build­ing in 2022 due to wa­ter dam­age, but the dis­ap­pear­ance went un­no­ticed un­til ear­li­er this year.

On Feb­ru­ary 20, the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ap­point­ed a team to con­duct a full au­dit of records, the ar­moury, and stor­age fa­cil­i­ties at the bar­racks.

Ag CoP warns: Do not en­gage po­lice of­fi­cers

Re­peat­ing an ear­li­er warn­ing for peo­ple to avoid en­gag­ing of­fi­cers when con­front­ed, as they will take de­fen­sive ac­tion which could prove to be fa­tal, Ben­jamin strong­ly ad­vised per­sons to re­sist that urge.

He in­stead ad­vised the pub­lic to com­ply with the in­struc­tions of law en­force­ment.

“Our of­fi­cers will not back down. We will not al­low T&T to be run by crim­i­nals or any­one who be­lieves that they want to break the law. We are go­ing to stand strong.”

On the is­sue of body cam­eras for po­lice of­fi­cers, which he agreed were cur­rent­ly not enough – and with com­plaints that of­fi­cers were not wear­ing them and, in some cas­es, not even turn­ing them on – Ben­jamin said they were cur­rent­ly seek­ing to ac­quire more so­phis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment which they could turn on from the Com­mand Cen­tre.

“We are go­ing to stand strong,” he un­der­scored.

On the is­sue of body cam­eras for po­lice of­fi­cers, which he agreed were cur­rent­ly not enough – and with com­plaints that of­fi­cers were not wear­ing them and, in some cas­es, not even turn­ing them on – Ben­jamin said they were cur­rent­ly seek­ing to ac­quire more so­phis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment which they could turn on from the Com­mand Cen­tre.