PoS Division records 3% increase in serious crimes

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

The Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion (PoSD) has record­ed an in­crease in se­ri­ous crime be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and June 2, with mur­ders ac­count­ing for the largest in­crease.

The dis­clo­sure came from Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, against the back­drop of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), which is sched­uled to ex­pire on June 17.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the di­vi­sion’s suc­cess­es, Thom ad­mit­ted that of­fi­cers have al­so faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view.

Nev­er­the­less, he as­sured that pub­lic safe­ty re­mains the di­vi­sion’s top pri­or­i­ty.

“The Di­vi­sion record­ed a three per cent in­crease in se­ri­ous crime, with homi­cides rep­re­sent­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge,” Thom said.

“Mur­ders and lar­ce­ny of­fences in­creased while sex­u­al of­fences, rob­beries, lar­ce­ny of mo­tor ve­hi­cles, and lar­ce­ny of dwelling hous­es de­creased,” he added.

De­spite the in­crease, Thom not­ed that 2025 had been an ex­cep­tion­al year for the di­vi­sion, marked by ma­jor re­duc­tions in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“2025 was an ex­cep­tion­al year for POSD with ex­treme­ly mas­sive re­duc­tions in crime, in­clud­ing a 65 per cent de­crease in mur­ders,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Thom, de­tailed crime analy­sis showed that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders record­ed so far this year were gang-re­lat­ed and con­cen­trat­ed main­ly in the Besson Street and Bel­mont po­lice dis­tricts and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

In re­sponse, the TTPS has adopt­ed a tar­get­ed in­tel­li­gence-led strat­e­gy aimed at dis­rupt­ing the crim­i­nal net­works be­lieved to be re­spon­si­ble for the vi­o­lence.

Thom dis­closed that the di­vi­sion had ap­plied for Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), many of which had al­ready been suc­cess­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed.

He al­so not­ed that more than 500 PDOs have been is­sued na­tion­wide since the SoE be­gan in Jan­u­ary.

Ac­cord­ing to Thom, the TTPS has in­ten­si­fied its crime-fight­ing ef­forts through en­hanced in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, co­or­di­nat­ed search war­rants and raids, tar­get­ed an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions fo­cused on re­peat of­fend­ers and gang af­fil­i­ates, and in­creased po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty through­out the di­vi­sion.

PoSD Crime Sta­tis­tics (Jan 1 – June 2)

Se­ri­ous crime: ↑ 3%

Mur­ders: 19 (up from 13 in 2025)

Mur­ders linked to gangs: 95%

Il­le­gal firearms seized: 18

Am­mu­ni­tion re­cov­ered: 480 rounds

Nar­cotics seized: 85.73 kg

Ar­rests made: 360+

Per­sons de­tained un­der PDOs: 60

Per­sons charged: 209

Av­er­age po­lice re­sponse time: 9 min­utes