Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der com­mend­ed the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Po­lice Ser­vice for its suc­cess in re­duc­ing mur­ders and curb­ing il­le­gal drugs and weapons. Speak­ing dur­ing a vis­it to the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion to­day, Alexan­der de­scribed the 300 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders as a “mile­stone,” not­ing that the is­land record­ed sev­en mur­ders this year com­pared to 24 last year.

He cred­it­ed the achieve­ment to strong lead­er­ship and mo­ti­vat­ed of­fi­cers. “It’s all about lead­er­ship, en­cour­ag­ing of­fi­cers to go be­yond the call of du­ty. The suc­cess be­longs to those forces, not me,” he said.

He added that the is­land’s of­fi­cers had al­so been help­ing to sup­press il­le­gal drugs and weapons, say­ing, “If you are suf­fer­ing from hu­man traf­fick­ing, drugs, and guns en­ter­ing your coun­try, and some­body saw it fit to pro­vide some lev­el of pro­tec­tion at sea to pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing, would you not en­joy that? The price of mar­i­jua­na went up. The price of co­caine went up. Some­thing is hap­pen­ing pos­i­tive in and around Trinidad and To­ba­go.”