Guevarro, Alexander warn silence fuelling crime

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der are call­ing on cit­i­zens to hold each oth­er ac­count­able and en­sure those re­spon­si­ble for the crime sit­u­a­tion are iden­ti­fied and brought to jus­tice.

Field­ing ques­tions from re­porters dur­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) 103rd Sports and Fam­i­ly Day at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James, yes­ter­day, the Com­mis­sion­er and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter were asked about the re­cent mass shoot­ings in­volv­ing the use of high-pow­ered weapons with­in the last month, which had seen two chil­dren los­ing their lives re­spec­tive­ly. The Com­mis­sion­er called for pub­lic in­tro­spec­tion and re­flec­tion.

Gue­var­ro de­scribed the con­tin­ued use of high-pow­ered ri­fles as, “A sad­den­ing state of af­fairs in the coun­try when per­sons use high-pow­ered weapons and we have mul­ti­ple vic­tims from just one in­ci­dent.”

He claimed this showed the au­thor­i­ties need­ed to get a deep­er in­sight in­to what was hap­pen­ing and per­haps in­tro­duce, “More strin­gent con­trols on how firearms are com­ing in­to the coun­try in an il­le­gal way.”

With­out delv­ing in­to the cir­cum­stances re­lat­ing to the two shoot­ings, the CoP is­sued a clar­i­on call for the pub­lic to hold it­self more ac­count­able in en­sur­ing those re­spon­si­ble were ap­pre­hend­ed.

Train­ing his “gun” on the cit­i­zen­ry as he made a col­lec­tive call for peo­ple to do the right thing, Gue­var­ro said, “It is your sons, broth­ers, your fam­i­ly, you know that they are in pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal weapons and they are com­mit­ting these heinous crimes and you are re­main­ing silent.”

“And that in it­self is an in­dict­ment on so­ci­ety and how we should ap­proach, how we deal with crim­i­nal­i­ty in go­ing for­ward.”

Re­call­ing a meet­ing he had held with the fa­ther of 14-year-old Zion Roberts days af­ter he was killed in Bel­mont in Ju­ly 2025, the top cop re­mem­bered beg­ging for in­for­ma­tion which could lead to the ap­pre­hen­sion of those re­spon­si­ble.

At the time, Roberts’ fa­ther, Aquil Kafi, re­port­ed­ly told Gue­var­ro, “Boss, I know who do it. I go sort it out my­self.”

Kafi, along with his 23-month-old son, were two of the vic­tims from Wednes­day’s triple homi­cide at Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, Bel­mont.

Gue­var­ro re­it­er­at­ed, “I want to make a call for per­sons who have that in­for­ma­tion to share it with the po­lice and do not take mat­ters in­to their own hands,” adding, “Had he giv­en me the ev­i­dence to put the per­sons, who had his son in the ground ... we would have been able to cap­ture them and put them be­hind bars.”

The top cop al­so de­clined to com­ment on the bomb­shell claim by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge in the Low­er House on Fri­day, that last week’s triple homi­cide in Bel­mont was linked to the April 19 quadru­ple mur­der in Mor­vant.

Gue­var­ro said, “I will not be able to con­firm that in­for­ma­tion for you at this time.”

“The po­lice ser­vice has un­der­tak­en an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and I won’t want to share too much of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion out in­to the pub­lic.”

Alexan­der, mean­while, en­dorsed the call by Gue­var­ro for greater so­ci­etal and per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as he said par­ents and ed­u­ca­tors had an even big­ger role to play in chang­ing the cur­rent land­scape.

He called for in­creased dis­cus­sions as he said there were “Fa­thers who shoot­ing per­sons, killing young chil­dren and then go­ing home and sleep, and hug­ging up their chil­dren.”

He ad­vised, “Some­times we need to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our ac­tions as par­ents and stop this po­lit­i­cal game we are play­ing.”

The TTPS is cur­rent­ly as­sem­bling a team of ex­perts, in­clud­ing the cler­gy, crim­i­nol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists and oth­ers, who would soon be vis­it­ing schools to be­gin ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies.

Re­gard­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions be­ing placed on the shoul­ders of the Drone Unit es­tab­lished this month, Alexan­der said re­sources were be­ing pumped in­to the ex­ist­ing frame­work to adapt to the present crime sit­u­a­tion.

In­di­cat­ing his in­ten­tion to en­sure the TTPS had the req­ui­site re­sources it needs to fight crime, the min­is­ter agreed body cam­eras were im­por­tant but coun­tered, “The min­istry does not have an is­sue with po­lice of­fi­cers wear­ing body cams, but what I have de­cid­ed to do at this time, is to pro­tect law en­force­ment first by giv­ing them the req­ui­site pro­tec­tion gears so they can bet­ter pro­tect you as cit­i­zens and the na­tion as a whole.”

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter has re­fused to grade the re­port card of Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro, pre­fer­ring in­stead to leave it up to the top cop’s sub­or­di­nates to rate him.

How­ev­er, he sig­nalled his ap­proval of Gue­var­ro’s per­for­mance, “I have to­tal con­fi­dence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. Mr Gue­var­ro is here push­ing his team.”

Gue­var­ro will cel­e­brate one year in of­fice on June 17.