‘Safest Carnival in 20 years’

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have de­fend­ed the over­all se­cu­ri­ty and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment of Car­ni­val 2026, de­scrib­ing the sea­son as one of the safest in 20 years, de­spite in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence be­ing re­port­ed.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s yes­ter­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said the event will be re­mem­bered for its strong se­cu­ri­ty record.

“I think this Car­ni­val will go down as one of the safest in the last two decades,” Sturge said, cred­it­ing what he de­scribed as metic­u­lous plan­ning by Gov­ern­ment and the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

He al­so sin­gled out Gold Com­man­der, DCP Suzette Mar­tin, com­mend­ing her on a job “well done.”

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter did not ref­er­ence the mur­der of 19-year-old Laven­tille res­i­dent Jay­den Rouff, who died af­ter be­ing stabbed dur­ing J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions in Port-of-Spain on Car­ni­val Mon­day. Two oth­er peo­ple were shot in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in the cap­i­tal and a woman was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed in a mas band in Wood­brook. Po­lice al­so re­port­ed that a 26-year-old woman was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed af­ter at­tend­ing a fete in Ch­aguara­mas on Car­ni­val Sun­day.

Pressed by re­porters on whether those in­ci­dents un­der­mined claims of a safe Car­ni­val, Sturge said, “If you com­pare it to pre­vi­ous years, is this the first time some­one has been shot at dur­ing Car­ni­val? Is this the first time some­one was mur­dered dur­ing Car­ni­val? The an­swer is no. It is not un­com­mon. And the fact that you can on­ly men­tion three in­ci­dents over a five-day pe­ri­od, it tells how safe it was.”

“No Car­ni­val is in­ci­dent-free. Was there ever an in­ci­dent-free Car­ni­val in the last 25 years? The an­swer is no,” he added.

In com­par­i­son, one mur­der oc­curred di­rect­ly with­in a Car­ni­val event in 2025. Three were record­ed in 2024, though none took place with­in des­ig­nat­ed Car­ni­val safe zones or along pa­rade routes. In 2023, no mur­ders were record­ed on pa­rade routes, though two killings oc­curred na­tion­al­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od. There were no Car­ni­val-re­lat­ed mur­ders in 2022, when COVID-19 re­stric­tions cur­tailed pub­lic cel­e­bra­tions.

Tak­ing a more mea­sured tone, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ar­gued that sev­er­al of the re­port­ed in­ci­dents were not di­rect­ly linked to of­fi­cial Car­ni­val events.

“The prob­lem here lies that there are per­sons who con­tin­ue to have is­sues with each oth­er. And when they come to the Car­ni­val ar­eas, they bring their prob­lem with them. If you look at who was shot and all of that, they are from the same area. Doesn’t that paint a pic­ture?” he said.

“So when you’re talk­ing about safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, none of those in­ci­dents were re­al­ly Car­ni­val-re­lat­ed, you know. That’s you bring­ing your per­son­al thing in­to the Car­ni­val. Every­thing was done as it re­lates to pro­tect­ing the cit­i­zens from per­sons en­ter­ing in­to the Car­ni­val ar­eas armed.”

He said in the month lead­ing up to Car­ni­val Tues­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the De­fence Force, tran­sit po­lice, the prison ser­vice, fire ser­vice, im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment, traf­fic war­dens and mu­nic­i­pal po­lice all co­or­di­nat­ed to bol­ster se­cu­ri­ty. He thanked the pub­lic for what he de­scribed as “re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour,” while ac­knowl­edg­ing that cer­tain op­er­a­tional ar­eas would re­quire “a lit­tle tweak­ing” based on ob­ser­va­tions dur­ing the sea­son.

Sturge al­so point­ed to what he de­scribed as a safe coastal sea­son.

“Quite apart from a very safe Car­ni­val in the streets, dur­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties, out­side of that, on the beach­es and the coast­lines and so on, there was al­so a lot of safe­ty. We have not seen any in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence that we can talk about or any drown­ings or any­thing like that. So, I think all in all this year, we have been blessed in that re­gard,” said Sturge.

The De­fence Min­is­ter al­so com­mend­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic for large­ly heed­ing his call to keep sex­u­al con­duct out of pub­lic spaces dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Sturge first is­sued the warn­ing on Car­ni­val Fri­day, af­ter videos cir­cu­lat­ed on­line show­ing fe­male mas­quer­aders from Tribe Car­ni­val re­ceiv­ing a sex toy as part of their cos­tume pack­age. At the time, he cau­tioned rev­ellers against en­gag­ing in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty in pub­lic, stress­ing that such be­hav­iour, even if lim­it­ed, was in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

Re­flect­ing on the fes­tiv­i­ties yes­ter­day, Sturge said he had seen on­ly a hand­ful of videos sug­gest­ing mis­con­duct and main­tained that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Car­ni­val pa­trons act­ed re­spon­si­bly.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents, the min­is­ter said pub­lic be­hav­iour over­all met ex­pec­ta­tions, with most rev­ellers fo­cused on cel­e­bra­tion.

“I saw two or three videos. That’s all I’ll say. But gen­er­al­ly, I think peo­ple were well be­haved. I think peo­ple were hav­ing a time.”

He re­count­ed one vi­ral clip that drew at­ten­tion dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions.

“There was one video which was fun­ny, where a per­son from a mas camp was com­plain­ing four per­sons—two males, two fe­males—who went in­to her fa­cil­i­ties to cop­u­late and she had to run them out and she was curs­ing and all that. And that was fun­ny,” he said.

“But, I mean, that’s nor­mal. It’s not best prac­tice. Most peo­ple were well-be­haved. But, I mean, if we go by the sta­tis­tics, you know you ex­pect de­viant be­hav­iour from time to time but it was in the mi­nor­i­ty.”