Police Commissioner Erla Christopher-Harewood has the full support of National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds in her bid to have the country’s murder toll reduced by June.

Minister Hinds says, however, the murder toll is an ineffective stand-alone assessment of policing, as it doesn’t take into account the preventative measures employed by law enforcement.

“While you will have x amount of murders for a day, a month, a year, nobody takes any time, and I understand that, to determine how the police presence prevented … it could have been quite worse. But I accept that unfortunately, it is the way it is,” Hinds said.

The Minister was speaking with reporters at the Maximum Security Prison, Golden Grove Road, Arouca, on Tuesday.

“When I heard the CoP say to the national community that we can expect some slowdown by the month of June, I saw that as an assertion of her justified confidence.”

“She’s a very experienced police officer, very qualified, and now as CoP, with her hands on the wheel, directing it, she will know what her strengths and what the circumstances are … she will know better than all of us what she is doing, and I have some ideas of what they are doing since I have had access to the police’s strategic plan and operational plans from time to time,” he added.