Gail Alexan­der

Gang­sters be warned: this is a war you will not win.

That’s the mes­sage from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day to peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties who feel they can en­gage the po­lice in gun­fights.

To bol­ster “hotspot” com­mu­ni­ties plagued by gun vi­o­lence and which are gen­uine­ly hurt­ing, how­ev­er, Row­ley al­so an­nounced a re­cov­ery team to fos­ter good or­der and en­gage in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

Row­ley ad­dressed the is­sues yes­ter­day fol­low­ing protests in parts of Trinidad dur­ing the first three days of the week. The protests were sparked by last week­end’s al­leged ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings of Mor­vant res­i­dents Joel Ja­cob, Noel Di­a­mond and Is­rael Clin­ton. The PM ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the three men, rel­a­tives of PC Allen Mose­ley, who was killed in an en­counter hours be­fore the men were killed and those of Or­nel­la Greaves, who was killed dur­ing a con­fronta­tion be­tween Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dents and the po­lice dur­ing one of Tues­day’s protests in the cap­i­tal.

“T&T has five dead peo­ple, griev­ing fam­i­lies and a bruised na­tion...look­ing to the fu­ture hop­ing this would be a thing of the past,” Row­ley said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the protests were or­gan­ised and there was ev­i­dence peo­ple with po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions as­so­ci­at­ing with crim­i­nal el­e­ments were in­volved. He al­so made it clear the po­lice must en­sure they main­tain pub­lic trust and urged that var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties ex­pe­dite their probes on the killings.

Row­ley said killings and firearm use caus­es mem­bers of com­mu­ni­ties to ex­press them­selves in out­rage, anger, sad­ness and hope, “...Hope that jus­tice would be served for all those who de­serve jus­tice…and that we’d find a way out of this sit­u­a­tion where our young peo­ple es­pe­cial­ly wouldn’t be re­sort­ing to the kind of mob be­hav­iour—or worse, or­gan­ised by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, in their search for jus­tice or re­venge.”

He said he sym­pa­thised with those who were call­ing for jus­tice in the killings of the Mor­vant res­i­dents.

“I be­lieve all those call­ing for jus­tice are com­plete­ly cor­rect and I find a com­mon cause with them, those who are de­mand­ing re­venge, I warn against that ap­proach.

Vi­o­lence can’t be ig­nored

“So those who want to protest be­cause of what or how they feel, or want to draw to the at­ten­tion of those in au­thor­i­ty in the coun­try that is pro­tect­ed by law and there is noth­ing wrong with that. When it turns to vi­o­lence and de­struc­tion, then that is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry which can­not be en­cour­aged or can­not be ig­nored.”

To those with firearms who think they can en­gage the po­lice in fire­fights and win, he warned, “As long as we are awash with firearms and there are in­di­vid­u­als in the com­mu­ni­ties who be­lieve they could en­gage the po­lice in a fire­fight, and we do have young men who be­lieve that, we say to them that is a war that you will nev­er win and you shouldn’t de­clare. The po­lice isn’t your en­e­my—the po­lice is the pro­tec­tor and serv­er of all.’’

Asked about threats by gang­sters against po­lice of­fi­cers, he said, “The fact that we are ac­cept­ing there are gangs is bad enough. The gangs, if they ex­ist as they do, if they iden­ti­fy the po­lice as a com­mon en­e­my, then what is hap­pen­ing here would be the wors­en­ing of a bad sit­u­a­tion.”

Ghost of Life­s­port pro­gramme

He said those who had a hand in Tues­day’s oc­cur­rences were adding to the al­ready bad sit­u­a­tion.

“So for those con­tribut­ing to this chron­ic sit­u­a­tion, it is a wors­en­ing of an al­ready bad sit­u­a­tion and to them we say run your run. Some of them are two by four politi­cians, some of them are hard­ened crim­i­nals for whom crime does pay.”

Row­ley al­so said the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s gov­ern­ment’s Life­s­port pro­gramme cre­at­ed a crim­i­nal net­work still haunt­ing T&T to date, which made it easy to or­gan­ise what was seen re­cent­ly. He said many of the same Life­s­port play­ers are now at work.

On whether war­ring gangs had unit­ed to fight po­lice on Tues­day, Row­ley said he was very con­cerned about this and gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

If gangs iden­ti­fied po­lice as a com­mon en­e­my, he said it was wors­en­ing of a bad sit­u­a­tion and of very great con­cern.

Stop look­ing through bar­rel of a gun

If peo­ple have il­le­gal arms, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ke­with Row­ley says the po­lice will al­so have to be armed. But he urged gang mem­bers to “... put down this life of crime and stop look­ing at your fu­ture through the bar­rel of a gun.”

He said the big­ger prob­lem in Tues­day’s protests was just how much was in mo­tion and how much of it was by pri­or agen­da. He said there was suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to show T&T’s ex­posed to a sit­u­a­tion where many young peo­ple have ob­tained firearms for their pro­tec­tion from oth­ers like crim­i­nals, out of fear of crim­i­nal con­duct against them or to use against peo­ple tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

He said it was quite un­der­stood that with the lev­el of armed peo­ple, the re­sponse will be armed po­lice.

“When those two sit­u­a­tions come to­geth­er, as is com­mon­place in T&T – it’s not un­ex­pect­ed there will be out­comes of this na­ture,” Row­ley said.

“To­day, I’m ap­peal­ing to the young peo­ple - and not so young - of this coun­try, when you take up arms for what­ev­er rea­son, you au­to­mat­i­cal­ly put your­selves in harm’s way with re­spect to law en­force­ment be­cause the on­ly re­sponse the state will pro­vide in that sit­u­a­tion is an armed con­tin­gent...”

How­ev­er, Row­ley said the po­lice must re­spond with­in the law and if they re­quire jus­tice, they must not pur­sue re­venge and they must be ex­posed to the “rigours of ev­i­dence,“

Row­ley not­ed one re­gion­al coun­try with com­mu­ni­ties plagued by gun vi­o­lence and which had ar­eas where po­lice couldn’t pa­trol.

“That end­ed very bad­ly for those com­mu­ni­ties, those peo­ple and that coun­try - we will not al­low that to de­vel­op in T&T,” he said.

He ac­knowl­edged Gov­ern­ment’s re­solve to pre­vent gun vi­o­lence will bring au­thor­i­ties face-to-face with those who see vi­o­lence as suc­cess. But Row­ley said, “We’ll work against it and do an al­ter­na­tive. That al­ter­na­tive to­day is es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery pro­gramme aimed at these prob­lem ar­eas which give birth and sus­te­nance to the law­less­ness, hurt, anger, dis­crim­i­na­tion and all the neg­a­tives as­so­ci­at­ed with ‘hotspots.’”