Murder count hits 100

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the Gov­ern­ment will not sit by and watch crime con­tin­ue as the coun­try reached the 100 mur­der mark yes­ter­day.

He al­so says he will not grade his per­for­mance and will let the peo­ple do that for him as the Gov­ern­ment’s one-year an­niver­sary in of­fice ap­proach­es.

Alexan­der spoke with the me­dia at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for some 52 bud­ding hair­dressers at the Roslyn Hall and Lounge, Au­zonville Road, Tu­na­puna, yes­ter­day.

“I am not pre­pared to grade my­self. I will tell you what, that’s the ques­tion I should ask the young peo­ple here to­day, what grade they will give their MP?”

The mur­der count climbed to 100 af­ter the mur­ders of two men in Ari­ma and Diego Mar­tin.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 4 pm on Fri­day, Joel Plaza, 50 of By­pass Road, Ma­tu­ri­ta Trace Ex­ten­sion, Ari­ma, was of­fload­ing items out­side his home when he was killed. No mo­tive was giv­en for his killing.

The sec­ond in­ci­dent took place just af­ter mid­night yes­ter­day at Riv­er Es­tate, Diego Mar­tin, near Dirk’s Mi­ni Mart. Po­lice re­port­ed that armed men ex­it­ed a white ve­hi­cle and opened fire on Mc­Don­ald Bai­ley, 52, of Blue Basin Road. Two oth­er men were al­so in­jured in the shoot­ing.

Asked about the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to ad­dress vi­o­lent crimes, Alexan­der said, “Let us be re­al about this. I’m say­ing to you, it’s a work in progress. You see how many things are hap­pen­ing at the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty? You know why? Be­cause I am a go-get­ter. This Gov­ern­ment will not sit idly by and watch things con­tin­ue. But again, it’s a work in progress.”

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ues to im­ple­ment “a mul­ti-pronged, in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven ap­proach” to ad­dress vi­o­lent crime, adding that there is more work to be done.

“Cen­tral to this strat­e­gy is the tar­get­ing of un­der­ly­ing dri­vers, par­tic­u­lar­ly gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty. Through fo­cused an­ti-gang ini­tia­tives and the strate­gic use of leg­isla­tive pow­ers avail­able un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE), we are ac­tive­ly work­ing to dis­rupt crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es and dis­man­tle or­gan­ised net­works,” she said.

She added that ef­fec­tive polic­ing re­quires pub­lic part­ner­ship, re­sult­ing in the TTPS ex­pand­ing its com­mu­ni­ty-led in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes that are crit­i­cal in re­duc­ing the risk of re­tal­ia­to­ry vi­o­lence and fos­ter­ing co­op­er­a­tion be­tween law en­force­ment and com­mu­ni­ties.

The Gold Com­man­der for the SoE as­sured that the po­lice re­main stead­fast in their com­mit­ment to pro­tect and serve with pride.

“We will con­tin­ue to lever­age mod­ern polic­ing strate­gies, strength­ened part­ner­ships, and com­mu­ni­ty col­lab­o­ra­tion to re­duce vi­o­lent crime and en­hance pub­lic safe­ty Alexan­der added that par­ents play a crit­i­cal role in ad­dress­ing crime in the coun­try, adding that some mur­ders are due to fam­i­ly dis­putes and oth­er non-gang-re­lat­ed caus­es.

“If the po­lice put out in the pub­lic do­main the in­for­ma­tion that we have about mur­ders, very few of it will be gang-re­lat­ed, eh. The be­hav­iour of some cit­i­zens, the anger, the frus­tra­tion, the hurt, and most of all, the con­trol of prop­er­ty, is re­sult­ing in a lot of these things tak­ing place,” he said, adding that “We have be­come a ma­te­ri­alised so­ci­ety.”

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion to grad­u­ates, Alexan­der took time out to com­fort Iesha Kallicha­ran, whose moth­er, Tri­cia Ma­haraj, was gunned down when she went to view a car that her killers claimed was for sale. He said Kallicha­ran dis­played strength by at­tend­ing the grad­u­a­tion days af­ter the mur­der.

“You, as par­tic­i­pants, must stand with her and give her the courage to con­tin­ue; it is not over.”

His en­cour­age­ment came af­ter telling the grad­u­ates to live by the words of Michael Jack­son’s “Don’t stop till you get enough.”

He en­cour­aged the grad­u­ates to “get your own mon­ey and build your own fu­ture to be less de­pen­dent on us” by “mak­ing your own mon­ey.”

Not want­i­ng to leave out the men, he said there are plans to in­tro­duce cours­es in tai­lor­ing, weld­ing and oth­er skills.