Break-away fac­tions of two of the coun­try’s ma­jor gangs—the Mus­lims and Ras­ta City—and “be­lief” con­ver­sions of mem­bers from Ras­ta City to Mus­lim and vice ver­sa are be­lieved to have been one of the ma­jor caus­es of Thurs­day’s “may­hem” that broke out be­tween the two gangs in East Port-of-Spain.

Thir­ty mem­bers of the Mus­lim gang were ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice moved in­to the com­mu­ni­ty to quell the vi­o­lence.

How­ev­er, mem­bers of the Mus­lim gang have ac­cused the po­lice of ar­rest­ing “the wrong peo­ple” and ac­cused them of “al­low­ing the Ras­ta City gang­sters” to “freely walk the streets” for al­leged “un­der­ly­ing rea­sons.”

In­tel­li­gence has al­so iden­ti­fied a gang leader and 11 mem­bers who are be­lieved to have been be­hind the ‘may­hem’ that broke out in the cap­i­tal city, which re­port­ed­ly stemmed from home in­va­sions and led to shootouts be­tween ri­val gang mem­bers.

Po­lice of­fi­cers from the Or­gan­ised Crime and In­tel­li­gence Unit and Guard and Emer­gency Branch were al­so forced to shoot in­to the air to dis­pel some of the vi­o­lence. The in­ci­dent start­ed at Nel­son Street where, ac­cord­ing to in­tel­li­gence sources, it is be­lieved that orig­i­nal Mus­lim gang mem­bers who joined the Ras­ta City gang moved in­to Nel­son Street in a bid to take over homes ei­ther owned or oc­cu­pied by oth­er gang mem­bers and their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies.

Guardian Me­dia was told the sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed to the point where the po­lice of­fi­cers them­selves were al­leged to have en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ty try­ing to re­store law and or­der at Nel­son, George and Duke Streets on Thurs­day and had to al­leged­ly seek help from gang lead­ers/heads/el­ders from the Ras­ta City and Mus­lim gangs short­ly af­ter mid­night.

At about 3.30 am, gang mem­bers al­leged­ly set a ve­hi­cle that was parked at up­per Nel­son Street on fire. Through­out the night there were al­so spo­radic gun­shots, caus­ing sev­er­al peo­ple to flee the area with their chil­dren.

Dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence led-op­er­a­tion that took place be­tween 8 am and 10 am yes­ter­day, of­fi­cers as­signed to the In­ter-Agency Task Force found a loaded Glock-19 pis­tol on the rooftop of Build­ing 48-52 at the George Street Plan­nings.

All the ar­rest­ed sus­pects are ex­pect­ed to re­main in po­lice cus­tody over the week­end to as­sist in fur­ther en­quiries.

Through­out yes­ter­day, po­lice of­fi­cers re­mained sta­tioned at strate­gic lo­ca­tions around East Port-of-Spain in a bid to main­tain law and or­der.

They al­so promised in­creased po­lice pa­trols and in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions over the week­end.