Following last weekend’s triple and double homicides:

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ju­nior Ben­jamin is boast­ing about the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s abil­i­ty to keep the mur­der rate at low­er lev­els than last year.

This de­spite a triple mur­der in Laven­tille and a dou­ble mur­der in Siparia over the week­end.

Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing a tour of the 1990 ex­hib­it of the TTPS Mu­se­um on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin re­port­ed that there were sev­en few­er mur­ders for the year thus far com­pared to the same cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, there were 213 mur­ders record­ed, com­pared to 220 mur­ders for the same pe­ri­od last year. On June 30, how­ev­er, the mur­der toll for the year matched 2025’s fig­ure when it reached 190. This was the first time in over a year that the mur­der toll matched a pre­vi­ous fig­ure.

Ad­dress­ing the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to keep the mur­der rate down, Ben­jamin said, “Last year we looked at we had 41-42 per cent re­duc­tion in terms of mur­ders, from over 600 to about 300 mur­ders and even when we look at our sta­tis­tics now, we are at least sev­en mur­ders less than we had last year.

“That in it­self is a tremen­dous feat. So even though we were so low last year, we are still un­der it in the mix of all that is go­ing on.”

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that while this was sig­nif­i­cant, as it re­flect­ed the crime-fight­ing ef­forts of the TTPS, he was al­so aware of the un­ease the pub­lic would feel af­ter the re­cent blood­shed.

Ben­jamin, there­fore, ac­cept­ed that while the pub­lic would not be in­ter­est­ed in any da­ta de­clines, it was im­por­tant to note that polic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties would con­tin­ue across the na­tion.

“We have to take it holis­ti­cal­ly and every mur­der, every death is one death too much,” he said.

“Even though we (our mur­ders) were so low last year, we are still trend­ing down­wards in the midst of all that is go­ing on.”

He added, “At the end of the day, the pub­lic is not in­ter­est­ed in our stats, the fact that peo­ple are dy­ing is still a great is­sue and we are say­ing that we are putting those sys­tems in place to en­sure curb the sit­u­a­tion as much as we can.”

He al­so not­ed that crime-pre­ven­tion was a “team ef­fort” and im­plored the pub­lic to do their part by part­ner­ing with the po­lice by shar­ing in­for­ma­tion on crim­i­nals.

“Crime is every­body’s busi­ness so if you see some­thing, say some­thing,” Ben­jamin said in a now fa­mil­iar ap­peal by the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive.

“Let us work to­geth­er, but the TT Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ues to re­al­ly cre­ate his­to­ry by re­duc­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion and we are say­ing if the pub­lic comes on board, to­geth­er we can se­ri­ous­ly re­duce crime so that even the fear of crime can be erad­i­cat­ed and that is a win-win sit­u­a­tion.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day, pas­tor, so­cial ad­vo­cate and for­mer mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC), Clive Dot­tin, said while the fear of crime and vi­o­lence in some com­mu­ni­ties was a ma­jor con­cern, the de­cline in the mur­der toll should not be dis­missed.

Re­fer­ring to the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), Dot­tin said with­out such a re­sponse, it was pos­si­ble that more mur­ders would have hap­pened.

“Imag­ine if we didn’t have a State of Emer­gency, the mur­der rate might have sky­rock­et­ed be­yond where we are and be­yond where we were last year,” Dot­tin said.

“You have to al­ways grap­ple with the is­sue that if things are rough with a State of Emer­gency, they could have been even rougher with­out a State of Emer­gency.”

Dot­tin, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that the spate of mur­ders over the week­end was un­for­tu­nate, as he called on law en­force­ment, to­geth­er with the Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and even faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, to each unite be­hind build­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties.

Re­fer­ring to a re­cent con­ver­sa­tion with the head of se­cu­ri­ty of a school, Dot­tin said there were fears that chil­dren as young as 14 were be­ing re­cruit­ed by gangs and called on com­mu­ni­ties to stage an ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion to pre­vent vi­o­lence be­fore it be­gan.

“That has to be ex­am­ined and we have to do our home­work in­to that sit­u­a­tion, which is ‘what do we have to do to get the young peo­ple to not see gangs as an at­trac­tive op­tion?” Dot­tin said.

Apart from pre­vent­ing gang re­cruit­ment, Dot­tin al­so lament­ed that such wide­spread blood­shed was tes­ta­ment to the chal­lenges faced by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns and drugs with­in com­mu­ni­ties, even in spite of ef­forts by the po­lice.

“We have to make a crit­i­cal ef­fort to deal with a group that we are not hap­py to deal with and that is the el­e­ment of those who own the drug trade,” he said.

“Once you have drugs com­ing in, you’re go­ing to have weapons com­ing in and I know in­di­vid­u­als right now who have come to me for help on co­caine, so co­caine is still flow­ing in the coun­try and that has to be ar­rest­ed.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo at­trib­uted the fear of crime among cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties to sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing how wide­ly pub­li­cised some mur­ders and vi­o­lent in­ci­dents were, which she said could mag­ni­fy un­ease even in the face of favourable sta­tis­tics.

She there­fore sug­gest­ed that in ad­di­tion to sim­ply mon­i­tor­ing da­ta about crime trends, care­ful ex­am­i­na­tion should be giv­en to the type of trust and re­la­tions that com­mu­ni­ties have with the po­lice and oth­er au­thor­i­ties.

“In terms of in­creas­ing this idea of safe­ty and re­duc­ing fear of crime is to mon­i­tor not on­ly the sta­tis­tics, but the qual­i­ty of life of peo­ple in T&T and their trust in the sys­tem. So, the re­la­tion­ship they have with the po­lice,” she said.

“Do they be­lieve that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem ... mean­ing all the things we have put in place, in­clud­ing pro­grammes, poli­cies, in­sti­tu­tions are work­ing in favour of the pub­lic and how they feel about their per­cep­tion of safe­ty.”

She added that it was al­so pos­si­ble that on a small­er scale, fam­i­lies and neigh­bour­hoods could be fear­ful of vi­o­lent crime giv­en their prox­im­i­ty to the vic­tims of mur­ders, as los­ing a rel­a­tive or some­one known to them could am­pli­fy the grief and trau­ma.

“Fear of crime is based on per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences, es­pe­cial­ly when you have a lot of peo­ple be­ing vic­timised by prop­er­ty crimes and they have faced in­di­rect mur­der ... so their in­di­rect ex­pe­ri­ences of fam­i­ly mem­bers be­ing mur­ders,” Nep­tune-Fi­garo said.

“The mere fact that there are so many crimes be­ing shared on so­cial me­dia, so whether there are more en­cour­ag­ing crime sta­tis­tics, the en­vi­ron­ment every day doesn’t equate to peo­ple feel­ing safer.”

Nep­tune-Fi­garo added that this un­ease leads to cit­i­zens con­tin­u­ing to take pre­cau­tions with their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties to avoid be­ing con­front­ed by crim­i­nals.

MUR­DER TOLL COM­PAR­I­SON

Year by Year

2025: 220 2026: 213 (up to yes­ter­day)

MONTH­LY TO­TAL

Ju­ly 2025: 30 Ju­ly 2026: 23