PM says murder figures show SOE is working

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has point­ed to po­lice sta­tis­tics which she says show a de­cline in mur­ders un­der her ad­min­is­tra­tion, ar­gu­ing that the da­ta demon­strate the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing mea­sures and the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

In a state­ment is­sued on her so­cial me­dia pages yes­ter­day evening, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that from Jan­u­ary 2026 to Ju­ly 20, 2026, there were 213 mur­ders, com­pared with 331 dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2024, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) last full year in of­fice. She said this rep­re­sent­ed 118 few­er mur­ders over the pe­ri­od.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so claimed that, based on mur­der rates record­ed dur­ing 2023 and 2024, there had been ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 few­er mur­ders across 2025 and 2026 com­bined than would have been pro­ject­ed had those trends con­tin­ued.

She ar­gued that if the PNM had re­mained in of­fice, there would have been about 400 more mur­der vic­tims, based on the mur­der rates record­ed dur­ing its ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter fur­ther said mur­ders had de­clined in every po­lice di­vi­sion be­tween 2024 and 2026, with the largest re­duc­tions record­ed in the Port-of-Spain, West­ern and North­ern Di­vi­sions.

She said those di­vi­sions in­clude con­stituen­cies tra­di­tion­al­ly re­gard­ed as PNM strong­holds and re­ject­ed crit­i­cism from Op­po­si­tion MPs, say­ing the da­ta showed those ar­eas were be­com­ing safer be­cause of the work of the Gov­ern­ment and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice un­der the SOE.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the sta­tis­tics in­di­cat­ed that both the Gov­ern­ment and the TTPS were mak­ing pos­i­tive progress un­der the SoE for the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens.

Over the week­end, po­lice were called to in­ves­ti­gate a triple mur­der at a gas sta­tion in Laven­tille and the dou­ble mur­der of two men in Siparia.