The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) on Monday appealed for support from law abiding citizens as the twin island republic recorded the highest number of murders in the month of January for any one year.
At least 59 people were murdered there since the start of the year, surpassing the 2008 figure for January when 57 people were killed.
Acting Police Commissioner, Stephen Williams, speaking on a television programme, said that despite the police seizing more than 1,000 illegal weapons, the country’s porous borders were making it easy for the illegal guns to enter the country.
Williams said that the seizure of 1,064 weapons last year “is way beyond my wildest dream (in) that we would have been ever able to seize in excess of a thousand firearms in Trinidad and Tobago”.
Williams said despite the record seizure it has failed to dent in the number of gun-related crimes there including murder, reiterating an earlier position that law enforcement agencies need public assistance in order to deal with th4e escalating criminal activities.
Last year, Trinidad and Tobago recorded a total of 494 murders, as against 463 the previous year.
