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In this 2023 file photo, Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher attends a meeting of the Joint Select Committee on National Security, at Cabildo Chambers, Port of Spain. – Photo by Jeff K Mayers
COMMISSIONER of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher said more police officers, CCTV cameras, intelligence gathering from the cybercrime unit and additional forensic resources will be deployed to Tobago to combat crime.
Her comments came one day after four men were killed in an ambush while playing a card game in Black Rock. The victims have been identified as Anslem Douglas, Gregory Hamlet, Samuel McKain and Jomoke Duncan. The murders took the island’s 2024 murder total to 16 – two more than the 2023 record-high.
At a media briefing following a National Security Council meeting at the Office of the Prime Minister, Central Administrative Service in Tobago, Scarborough, Harewood-Christopher said there has been an unprecedented increase in violent crime in Tobago.
“It has not gone unnoticed. Proactively, as Commissioner, I have deployed additional resources from the Guard and Emergency Branch and the Inter-Agency Task Force,” she said, adding that the aim is to create and facilitate a frontal approach against criminal elements.
Harewood-Christopher said on July 8, police officers from Trinidad were sent to Tobago to provide training to frontline officers. “We will increase our intelligence-focus on the island of Tobago. We will provide training to develop the capacity of the officers in terms of intelligence gathering and investigations.”
She also called for the public’s help in fighting crime, saying, “We cannot do it alone.”
