Geisha Kow­lessar

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has knocked a doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by a US on­line news or­gan­i­sa­tion, say­ing it does not give a true sense of Trinidad.Vice News has pro­duced a 23-minute doc­u­men­tary, ti­tled Cor­rup­tion, Co­caine and Mur­der in Trinidad.The video is on­line at https://news.vice.com/video/mur­der-and-cor­rup­tion-in-trinidad. It has been shared and viewed thou­sands of times via so­cial me­dia.

Grif­fith, who said he had seen the video, said it gave a sense of gloom and doom when that was not the case.

"It fo­cused specif­i­cal­ly on a small per­cent­age which is caus­ing fear among the 90 per cent of the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.Se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing wound­ings and shoot­ings, have gone down dra­mat­i­cal­ly," Grif­fith said.He ad­mit­ted mur­ders still posed a chal­lenge to the po­lice but as­sured they were do­ing all they could to hunt down crim­i­nals and bring them to jus­tice.

He added: "The po­lice have been do­ing an ex­cel­lent job and on a dai­ly ba­sis have been re­cov­er­ing a large num­ber of il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion. We still have to crack the mur­ders and go straight to the source.He said he in­tend­ed to "rip out the fangs" of gang lead­ers who have ac­cess to state fund­ing as they were us­ing the mon­ey on­ly to fu­el gang vi­o­lence and the drug trade.

"There are a small num­ber who con­tin­ue to call them­selves com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and the best way to deal with them is to cut their fi­nan­cial ac­cess to state fund­ing as this af­fects the whole crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem."They are us­ing this mon­ey to pur­chase more weapons and to pay youths to car­ry out their ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties. I am not turn­ing a blind eye to any­one," Grif­fith added.

On the is­sue of bribes be­ing tak­en by the Coast Guard, as al­leged in the video, Lieut Com­man­der Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste said the or­gan­i­sa­tion did not con­done that.

Urg­ing any­one with such in­for­ma­tion to go to the po­lice, Jean-Bap­tiste added: "We trust they will do this in the best in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty so the al­le­ga­tions could be prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed, as op­posed to just mak­ing blan­ket state­ments."

Video paints T&T'sdark­ness–PNM

PNM's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi said the video showed a "dark­nesss" which was felt by many cit­i­zens.He al­so ques­tioned the role of the po­lice in the video and de­mand­ed an­swers as to how its pre­sen­ter, US cit­i­zen Daniel Gold, was al­lowed "easy ac­cess" to han­dle ex­hibits, such as a gun, when the lo­cal me­dia were not af­ford­ed such an op­por­tu­ni­ty.

"Very im­por­tant­ly the video brings to the im­me­di­ate fore a crit­i­cal is­sue which this gov­ern­ment hopes will nev­er come to light, which is the con­nec­tion that this gov­ern­ment has been feed­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments through state work."The most silent Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to be res­olute­ly de­fi­ant to the needs of the cit­i­zens. All talk and no ac­tion have re­sult­ed in the de­struc­tion of the psy­che of T&T," Al-Rawi added.

What's in the video

A de­scrip­tion of the doc­u­men­tary post­ed with the video said Vice News vis­it­ed de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties of Port-of-Spain and spoke with the po­lice, ac­tivists, com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and gang­sters to un­der­stand Trinidad's decade-plus-long spike in killings.It added: "Many of the mur­ders are at­trib­uted to ruth­less and po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed street gangs which con­trol ter­ri­to­ries that are some­times no larg­er than a city block. The gangs fight over lu­cra­tive gov­ern­ment con­tracts meant to pro­vide so­cial ser­vices and com­bat un­em­ploy­ment.

"But gang vi­o­lence is mere­ly a symp­tom of a big­ger prob­lem. Trinidad has be­come an im­por­tant stop for drugs head­ed to West Africa and the US."Many ob­servers point to 'the big fish', the name­less po­lit­i­cal and busi­ness elites who are be­hind drug traf­fick­ing and the cul­ture of en­dem­ic cor­rup­tion and mur­der that comes with it."The de­scrip­tion al­so men­tioned the as­sas­si­na­tion of promi­nent Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal on May 4.

The video fea­tures in­ter­views with self-pro­claimed Beetham com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Ken­neth "Span­ish" Ro­driguez; a gang leader, who wears a ban­dan­na to hide his face; and Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, who says crime spi­ralled af­ter 1990 be­cause he was no longer keep­ing it un­der con­trol. In­sp Roger Alexan­der and oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers are seen pa­trolling Laven­tille.Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Hal Greaves and com­men­ta­tors Re­nee Cum­mings and Dau­rius Figueira al­so ap­pear.

Apart from Cum­mings, the in­ter­vie­wees' com­ments are sub-ti­tled.