Geisha Kow­lessar

A ma­jor think tank based in Wash­ing­ton, DC, be­lieves gangs are the "new war" in T&T, a re­port on Caribbean 360 said yes­ter­day.It added that re­cent in­ci­dents of in­tense vi­o­lence in the coun­try have al­so drawn in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion to the "ram­pant gang prob­lem" in the coun­try.

Caribbean 360 said a re­port by the Coun­cil on Hemi­spher­ic Af­fairs (CO­HA) yes­ter­day not­ed that re­gard­less of size, all forms of gangs in T&T were more per­va­sive than those to be found in de­vel­oped na­tions and have now be­come so­ci­etal in­sti­tu­tions that go be­yond so­cial pur­pos­es, "and are com­ing to re­sem­ble gov­ern­ments in and of them­selves."

It al­so charged that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been un­able to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with gang ac­tiv­i­ty, adding that leg­is­la­tion passed by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to fight crime, such as the An­ti-Gang Act, "has proven to be in­ef­fec­tive.""As it now stands, gangs have a stronger hold on the Trinida­di­an pop­u­la­tion than its gov­ern­ment does," the or­gan­i­sa­tion said.

CO­HA cit­ed the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2013 in­ci­dent in which Michael Piper's sev­ered head was dis­cov­ered on Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain. Po­lice have re­mained clue­less as to the mo­tive for his death.CO­HA, how­ev­er, has the­o­rised this is a move­ment to­wards a form of vi­o­lence used in South Amer­i­can coun­tries.

"There is now a trend to­wards this so-called 'South Amer­i­can method of war­fare,' in which be­head­ings and oth­er ex­treme forms of vi­o­lence are the norm in deal­ing with ri­val gangs and in which on­ly 14.3 per cent of T&T's youth is con­fi­dent in its sat­is­fac­tion with the po­lice force," CO­HA said.It said the Gov­ern­ment's re­cent de­ci­sion to "sim­ply amp up the po­lice force" is not like­ly to hin­der the per­sis­tent gang pres­ence.

"Vi­o­lence is a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the is­lands, but tar­get­ing this alone will not make an ef­fec­tive re­form," it said, adding that "gangs in T&T, specif­i­cal­ly in high-risk ar­eas, like east Port-of-Spain, in­clud­ing Laven­tille, have be­come so in­sti­tu­tion­alised that they pose a threat to–and even con­trol in some cas­es–T&T's cru­cial in­fra­struc­tures."

CO­HA said in T&T and Ja­maica, gangs have a "very un­usu­al and ul­ti­mate­ly far more dan­ger­ous ef­fect on their sur­round­ing ar­eas."Claim­ing T&T had more than 100 gangs, CO­HA said in the ab­sence of an ad­e­quate le­gal sys­tem, gangs "out­source their jus­tice in sit­u­a­tions as triv­ial as par­ents dis­ci­plin­ing their chil­dren."

Re­spond­ing to the find­ings of the re­port yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said for far too long, gangs have been al­lowed to build their clien­tele to the ex­tent where they have ac­quired "cer­tain streets and blocks which they con­sid­er their own.""We have cre­at­ed a mon­ster and we are the ones who need to de­stroy it," Grif­fith said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

"I am not at all sur­prised. When I first took this po­si­tion I re­alised one of the biggest prob­lems we have is gang ac­tiv­i­ty and we can­not con­tin­ue to sit idly by and con­tin­ue to bury our head in the sand and think that giv­ing out these con­tracts is go­ing to stop crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty...it is just the op­po­site."

Asked to spec­i­fy who the "we" re­ferred to, since his com­ment re­ferred to a re­cent promise he made to stop the prac­tice of state con­tracts be­ing giv­en to gang lead­ers, Grif­fith said pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments, as this prob­lem stemmed from the days of the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to do a prop­er au­dit of the so­cial projects, Grif­fith said these pro­grammes have be­come an av­enue for mass mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds which are fil­tered in­to the hands of gang lead­ers.

"So where the plan was to have these projects re­duce crime, it has in fact been in­creas­ing crime," Grif­fith added.He said a new an­ti-crime mea­sure ex­pect­ed to be rolled out with­in the com­ing weeks was an ini­tia­tive, head­ed by him, in which peo­ple would be urged to pass on in­for­ma­tion about gangs and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

"Any­body who feels they have prop­er in­for­ma­tion to bring down these in­di­vid­u­als, I am pro­vid­ing an av­enue for them which I per­son­al­ly would be co-or­di­nat­ing. I am ask­ing the coun­try to trust me on this," Grif­fith urged.

Re­sult of poor de­ci­sions

Pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer for the PNM Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day the CO­HA's re­port was es­pe­cial­ly trag­ic, as T&T was "wrestling" to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my through tourism and trade. He al­so crit­i­cised the PP Gov­ern­ment for dump­ing an­ti-crime mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion."The PNM has cau­tioned the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of T&T on umpteen oc­ca­sions as to the dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect of the Gov­ern­ment's wil­ful dis­man­tling of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems and ser­vices," Al Rawi said.

"In par­tic­u­lar, we have been at pains to de­mand a re­place­ment of the An­ti-Gang Unit of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt), which the Gov­ern­ment wil­ful­ly and reck­less­ly threw out on 2010."This move, he added, has re­sult­ed in an "ex­po­nen­tial growth" in crim­i­nal gang ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in east Port-of-Spain.Say­ing the coun­try has been faced with "gory news of de­cap­i­ta­tions gang­land-style" Al-Rawi said these killings have be­come the cen­tre stage of se­ri­ous re­ports of in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

"This gov­ern­ment, with four min­is­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pri­or to Mr Grif­fith, has yet to ac­count for the con­se­quences of its ac­tions and more par­tic­u­lar­i­ly of its state­ment of a re­al­is­tic and clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed crime plan of T&T," Al-Rawi added.He said Grif­fith had a "moun­tain" on his plate and seemed to have lit­tle as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment giv­en re­cent state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.

Al-Rawi called up­on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to step for­ward and take charge of the coun­try's na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems in a fash­ion that "will demon­strate ca­pa­bil­i­ty and in­spire con­fi­dence in the peo­ple."

what is co­ha

The Coun­cil on Hemi­spher­ic Af­fairs (CO­HA) is a Wash­ing­ton, DC-based non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) found­ed in 1975. It was es­tab­lished to "pro­mote the com­mon in­ter­ests of the West­ern hemi­sphere, raise the vis­i­bil­i­ty of re­gion­al af­fairs and in­crease the im­por­tance of the in­ter-Amer­i­can re­la­tion­ship, as well as en­cour­age the for­mu­la­tion of ra­tio­nal and con­struc­tive US poli­cies to­wards Latin Amer­i­ca." –Source Wikipedia