Tobago’s 2025 low murder rate is sustainable—retiring senior cop

ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

With ACP Os­wain Subero al­ready on pre-re­tire­ment leave and ACP Earl Elie now con­firm­ing he too is on his way out, Elie is as­sur­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans that the is­land’s hard-won drop in mur­ders will be main­tained even with the lead­er­ship changes.

Subero and Elie as­sumed lead­er­ship of the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion dur­ing what was wide­ly re­gard­ed as the is­land’s blood­i­est pe­ri­od in re­cent his­to­ry in 2024. At the time, more than 90 per cent of mur­ders were be­ing com­mit­ted with firearms, and pub­lic con­cern over crime had reached a peak.

Po­lice sta­tis­tics lat­er showed a sharp turn­around. Af­ter record­ing 26 mur­ders in 2024, To­ba­go end­ed 2025 with just 10 mur­ders — the low­est fig­ure seen in years.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, ACP Elie said while the fig­ures were en­cour­ag­ing, he does not view the re­duc­tion as a com­plete “suc­cess”.

“2025 has been an en­cour­ag­ing year for polic­ing in To­ba­go. I don’t use the word suc­cess be­cause as far as I’m con­cerned, once you have one mur­der, there isn’t any suc­cess,” Elie said. “But the fig­ures are en­cour­ag­ing, and the foun­da­tion that was laid in 2025 should take us strong­ly in­to 2026.”

Elie cred­it­ed the im­prove­ment to team­work rather than in­di­vid­ual lead­er­ship.

“This is all due in part to the hard work of the To­ba­go of­fi­cers and the ex­cel­lent man­age­ment team that we have had sup­port­ing those of­fi­cers,” he said. “So, I am grate­ful for the sup­port giv­en to the TPPS by the me­dia and the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

With con­cerns be­ing raised by res­i­dents and unions about whether the is­land can main­tain low mur­der lev­els fol­low­ing his ex­it, Elie in­sist­ed the progress made is sus­tain­able.

“One man can’t do the job by him­self. So, the re­sult in To­ba­go is a re­sult of a team ef­fort,” he said.

“Just one per­son be­ing re­moved from the team shouldn’t cre­ate such a sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive im­pact,” he as­sured.