Mark Bas­sant

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that when he sug­gest­ed a gun amnesty for gang lead­ers on Tues­day, he did so sar­cas­ti­cal­ly know­ing they would nei­ther turn in their weapons nor call any re­al truce.

“Gang mem­bers will nev­er sur­ren­der their firearms and there was nev­er a snow­ball chance in hell that they were ea­ger to have an amnesty. I made the com­ment not ex­pect­ing they would do so. It is a hypocrisy that they are call­ing a truce,” Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, even as key gang lead­ers said they were not pre­pared to sur­ren­der their firearms to the po­lice or em­brace any gun amnesty.

“It seems the me­dia mis­in­ter­pret­ed the sar­casm when I made the com­ment,” Grif­fith added.

Dur­ing his week­ly me­dia brief­ing on Tues­day, Grif­fith said he was glad to see ri­val gang mem­bers meet­ing over the week­end and de­clar­ing a truce and peace.

He de­clared then, “This is ex­cel­lent news if it means that per­sons who have been in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties that have been in­stru­men­tal in and been the cat­a­lyst for the ma­jor­i­ty of the 5,000 mur­ders in the last decade and they de­cide to say ‘let us form a truce’ be­cause we want peace.”

But on hear­ing they had blanked the gun amnesty sug­ges­tion yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said he ex­pect­ed noth­ing less from the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, ac­cus­ing them of on­ly com­ing to­geth­er for one pur­pose. “They as­sem­ble as crim­i­nal el­e­ments to at­tack the state. By ad­mit­tance, they will not even hand over a wa­ter gun, much less a ri­fle. It ex­pos­es a cos­met­ic arrange­ment by them, as­sem­bling as a unit to desta­bilise the coun­try,” Grif­fith said.

“The truce is noth­ing more than the en­e­my of my en­e­my is my friend, they’re as­sem­bled as a uni­fied body to fight the state.”

Asked about in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to per­sons who were al­leged­ly in­volved in the plot to desta­bilise the coun­try fol­low­ing last Tues­day’s protests in Port-of-Spain, Grif­fith said they were con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions and ex­plor­ing oth­er av­enues.

“There are oth­er laws that we are look­ing at for those per­sons of in­ter­est. And for those who have bro­ken the law, if we can­not get you one way, we’ll get them an­oth­er way,” he said.

Mo­ments be­fore Grif­fith spoke to Guardian Me­dia, a se­nior gang mem­ber made it clear they had no in­ten­tion of hand­ing in their guns at this time.

“This is the al­liance, it has no Mus­lim or Ras­ta City again. But Gary Grif­fith, we not putting down our guns just so. Why all yuh doh put down all yuh guns and all these un­just things go­ing down in the place, that poor peo­ple go­ing through and politi­cians play­ing games,” the mem­ber of the al­liance who con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day said.

The gangs were ac­cused of unit­ing to tar­get po­lice of­fi­cers and cer­tain mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment.

But while ad­mit­ting to form­ing an al­liance yes­ter­day, the gang mem­ber said it was main­ly to stop the killing amongst them­selves.

“We now stop killing one an­oth­er for guns, drugs and turf. But (gov­ern­ment min­is­ter name called) look how much poor peo­ple bawl­ing in the ghet­to and still cyar (sic) get ah home and they can­not up to now get their salary grant re­lief and their back pay. Give the peo­ple their mon­ey this week,” the se­nior gang mem­ber said.

The un­der­world fig­ure ac­knowl­edged that they had been part of the crime prob­lem but said they had now changed their fo­cus.

“We, as the so-called gang mem­bers, had a meet­ing, we had long talks, the boss­es and them and now we come to fight for a cause. We put a stop to the sense­less killing and the high crime rate, so we fight­ing for a cause.”

He claimed that they had now tak­en up the cause for the poor peo­ple in these de­pressed ar­eas across Trinidad and To­ba­go and said he hopes busi­ness­es and busi­ness­men were al­so tak­ing note.

The gang ac­tiv­i­ty of main­ly Port-of-Spain-based gangs came un­der the mi­cro­scope last week af­ter they con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that they had unit­ed fol­low­ing the protests over the po­lice killings of Joel Ja­cobs, Is­rael Moses Clin­ton and Noel Di­a­mond in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant. The car of a po­lice of­fi­cer was al­so fire­bombed at her Laven­tille home dur­ing the sec­ond day of protests over the killings.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has since set up a com­mit­tee head­ed by psy­chol­o­gist An­tho­ny Watkins to look in­to is­sues in East Port-of-Spain and oth­er de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties.