Police record 40,000 larceny reports in six years but detect fewer than 8,000

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Po­lice record­ed more than 40,000 re­ports un­der the Lar­ce­ny Act over al­most six years. How­ev­er, few­er than 8,000 of­fences led to a sus­pect be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged.

The re­ports in­clud­ed rob­bery, theft, fraud and break-ins. Be­tween 1 Jan­u­ary 2021 and 30 Sep­tem­ber 2026, po­lice record­ed 40,846 of­fences. Of these, 7,924 were list­ed as de­tect­ed. That leaves 32,922 of­fences, or 80.6 per cent, not record­ed as de­tect­ed.

At­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan ob­tained the fig­ures un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act for his client, Vishal Per­sad. They were pre­pared by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch. The fig­ures are dat­ed 27 Oc­to­ber 2026 and are pro­vi­sion­al, mean­ing they may be re­vised.

A de­tec­tion means a sus­pect has been ar­rest­ed and charged. It does not mean the per­son has been found guilty in court.

Po­lice se­nior of­fi­cials have spo­ken be­fore about the need to im­prove de­tec­tion. At a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee hear­ing on 17 May 2023, then act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Curt Si­mon said “we are not com­fort­able with our de­tec­tion rate”.

Then po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said train­ing and tech­nol­o­gy were pri­or­i­ties. Po­lice were bring­ing back ex­pe­ri­enced re­tired in­ves­ti­ga­tors to train of­fi­cers, she said.

The records cov­er all ten po­lice di­vi­sions. Rob­bery was the largest cat­e­go­ry, with 12,453 re­ports. This was fol­lowed by gen­er­al theft, with 10,696, and break­ing-in of­fences, with 8,877. The re­main­ing re­ports were for ve­hi­cle theft, fraud and oth­er of­fences.

North Cen­tral had the low­est de­tec­tion rate, at 9.8 per cent. Po­lice record­ed 4,386 re­ports and 431 de­tec­tions. That means few­er than one in ten of the di­vi­sion’s re­port­ed of­fences led to an ar­rest and charge. Port-of-Spain’s rate was 11.6 per cent. North­ern Di­vi­sion’s was 11.8 per cent.

East­ern had the high­est rate, at 44.7 per cent. This was still few­er than half of its re­port­ed of­fences. Cen­tral had the most re­ports, with 6,560, and record­ed 1,320 de­tec­tions. In To­ba­go, 547 of the 2,566 re­port­ed of­fences were de­tect­ed.

The ve­hi­cle theft fig­ures showed 4,966 re­ports and 90 peo­ple record­ed as ar­rest­ed and charged. Cen­tral ac­count­ed for 53 of those per­sons, fol­lowed by South­ern with ten and North­ern with eight.

The records al­so list­ed 10,599 peo­ple as ar­rest­ed and charged un­der the Act. That fig­ure counts peo­ple. The 7,924 fig­ure counts of­fences. More than one per­son can be charged for the same of­fence. The records did not give a sep­a­rate de­tec­tion to­tal for ve­hi­cle theft.

In Au­gust 2026, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rudolph Bhag­wan­deen de­scribed how Cen­tral Di­vi­sion was tack­ling ve­hi­cle theft. He said of­fi­cers were work­ing to share in­for­ma­tion faster, re­cov­er stolen ve­hi­cles and tar­get ar­eas where these crimes oc­curred.

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s 2024 sur­vey al­so record­ed con­cerns about po­lice fol­low-up. It re­ceived 3,887 re­spons­es be­tween Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber. About 63 per­cent did not be­lieve po­lice fol­lowed up re­ports. About 65 per­cent did not be­lieve po­lice gave feed­back.

The same sur­vey found that 79 per­cent feared be­ing a vic­tim of rob­bery, house­break­ing or home in­va­sion.

Po­lice have al­so re­port­ed progress in fight­ing crime. In Sep­tem­ber 2025, Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said na­tion­al de­tec­tion rates had in­creased from 30 to 35 per­cent af­ter the state of emer­gency be­gan that Ju­ly.

In its third quar­ter 2026 pub­lic per­for­mance ap­praisal, showed that 265 homi­cides were record­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary and Sep­tem­ber this year, a 3.6 per cent de­crease com­pared with the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025 and a 44.2 per cent de­cline com­pared with 2024.

It al­so showed that se­ri­ous re­port­ed crime fell to 7,593 in­ci­dents, rep­re­sent­ing a 13.3 per cent re­duc­tion com­pared with the 2025 fig­ure and a 17.3 per cent de­crease com­pared with 2024.

The FOIA al­so showed that the num­ber of re­ports fell from 8,015 in 2023 to 7,451 in 2024 and 6,890 in 2025. The 2026 to­tal of 4,377 cov­ers Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber on­ly.

Rob­beries were re­port­ed far more of­ten than mur­ders in 2024. Po­lice record­ed 2,400 rob­beries, com­pared with 625 mur­ders. There were al­so 1,695 re­ports of gen­er­al theft, 1,613 break­ing of­fences and 1,090 ve­hi­cle thefts.

The FOIA records pro­vide no con­vic­tion fig­ures. They al­so do not ex­plain why 32,922 re­port­ed of­fences were not record­ed as de­tect­ed.