Ot­to Car­ring­ton

With es­ca­lat­ing crime lev­els in T&T, and the au­thor­i­ties at its wit's end to bring the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol, a group call­ing it­self Project Rea­son is hop­ing that its in­ter­ven­tion can re­sult in a de­cline in vi­o­lent crimes and mur­ders in East Port-of-Spain.

On April 18, in one of many in­stances of vi­o­lence in the com­mu­ni­ty, a man was doused with a flam­ma­ble sub­stance and his body set on fire at Mi­nachy Al­ley, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain. This grue­some mur­der fol­lowed an ar­gu­ment be­tween two men.

Less than a week lat­er, on April 23, of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment re­spond­ed to re­ports of a com­mo­tion at Man­go Al­ley in Laven­tille, and when they ar­rived at the scene they found a body burn­ing at the side of the road.

De­tec­tives are now work­ing on the the­o­ry that set­ting bod­ies on fire is a new trend adopt­ed by the gang­sters.East Port-of-Spain is a well-known crime hotspot with vi­o­lent crimes and gang vi­o­lence on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, and so­lu­tions have seem­ing­ly elud­ed those in au­thor­i­ty de­spite the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sev­er­al crime fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is hop­ing that Project Rea­son will suc­ceed where oth­er ini­tia­tives have failed.

The pro­gramme, launched in No­vem­ber 2015, was born out of the Cit­i­zens Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, al­so an ini­tia­tive of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. At the heart of the pro­gramme are re­formed crim­i­nals and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists who walked the road of crime, spent time in prison, and now hope to make a dif­fer­ence.

The lo­cal pro­gramme is mir­rored from a sim­i­lar pro­gramme in the Unit­ed States called Cure Vi­o­lence.

The US-based pro­gramme op­er­ates un­der the prin­ci­ple that vi­o­lence is a health is­sue which in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties can help change, where strate­gic part­ner­ships are keys to suc­cess, and rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic and pro­fes­sion­al ways of work­ing are es­sen­tial for ef­fec­tive­ness.

Mar­cus Mc Al­is­ter of Cure Vi­o­lence, who was in T&T to train lo­cals for Project Rea­son, said he was a for­mer gang mem­ber and con­vict who spent ten years in a US Prison for crimes which he com­mit­ted. He turned his life around af­ter he saw the in­crease in crime and homi­cides in his home­town in Chica­go, USA.

Mc Al­is­ter has vis­it­ed T&T three times in the last six months to as­sist in set­ting up Project Rea­son.He has been at Cure Vi­o­lence for the last 11 years. He ex­plained that Cure Vi­o­lence and Project Rea­son "are sim­i­lar but cul­tured dif­fer­ent­ly."

Mc Al­is­ter said: "I can tell you the vi­o­lence that I see in var­i­ous parts across the world where this project is set up, it's the same."

How the pro­gramme works?

Mar­cus ex­plained that the Cure Vi­o­lence Health Mod­el is a new cut­ting edge method to re­duce vi­o­lence.

He said: "We train care­ful­ly se­lect­ed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, 'trust­ed in­sid­ers' to an­tic­i­pate where vi­o­lence may oc­cur and in­ter­vene be­fore it erupts. And we en­gage the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty to change be­hav­iour and recog­nise that vi­o­lence is un­cool and there are oth­er so­lu­tions to con­flict."

He likened the ini­tia­tive to deal­ing with some­one with a drug ad­dic­tion, "Just as we have now dis­cov­ered that it is more ef­fec­tive and cost sav­ing to treat drug ad­dic­tion as a health is­sue than to pun­ish it, it like­wise makes more sense to pre­vent events, pro­vide treat­ment for peo­ple at high risk, and change so­cial norms.

"Like all po­ten­tial­ly-harm­ful be­hav­iours–drug ad­dic­tion, smok­ing, eat­ing too much, ex­er­cis­ing too lit­tle, risky sex­u­al be­hav­iour and oth­er be­hav­iours, vi­o­lent be­hav­iour can be un­der­stood, di­ag­nosed and treat­ed through a health lens."

Mar­cus said the role of his team was to eval­u­ate the staff at Project Rea­son and to teach them skills such as con­flict res­o­lu­tion and so­cial work.He said he was pleased with the ef­forts to curb the vi­o­lence in East Port-of-Spain, but that they have their work cut out for them.

To val­i­date the work which they do, he said they have had re­ports done on the Cure Vi­o­lence mod­el by the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol Con­trol and Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, and the re­sults point to a re­duc­tion of vi­o­lent crimes be­tween 43 per cent and 83 per cent in com­mu­ni­ties where the pro­gramme is run.

He said two com­mu­ni­ties in the US, Illi­nois and Rochester City had seen two years with­out a mur­der and in some ar­eas there was no shoot­ings or any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties as a re­sult of the work done by Cure Vi­o­lence.Mar­cus said Project Rea­son has been able to get 20 in­di­vid­u­als from­var­i­ous gangs in East Port-of-Spain to join the bat­tle against crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The role of those iden­ti­fied is specif­i­cal­ly to bring in­for­ma­tion to the res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty about crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and al­so the more dan­ger­ous role of vi­o­lence in­ter­rupters.They have al­so been able to cre­ate suit­able em­ploy­ment and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for them.

In ad­di­tion, Project Rea­son has re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed at least 30 for­mer gang mem­bers in the last six months and they now lead a crime-free life. But they ad­mit that they have a long way to go. They are hop­ing to dou­ble the amount of peo­ple chang­ing their lives.

Hard to de­vel­op trust in the com­mu­ni­ty

The Project Rea­son team al­lowed us to take part in one of their walks with­in East Port-of-Spain, led by their su­per­vi­sor Derek "Strongy" Samuel.Samuel is from the Nel­son Street com­mu­ni­ty and is known by many as a com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist. He and the oth­er mem­bers were dressed in jeans and the light blue Project Rea­son jer­sey with ID tags.

He said al­though he is from the area, "it was hard for us to de­vel­op the trust since our jer­sey was la­belled Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. They thought we were in­form­ers but that soon changed as they re­alised that we are in no way af­fil­i­at­ed with the po­lice, but here to help and curb the vi­o­lence."

He said "our role is to talk to the youths, men­tor them, help those who want to walk away from a life of gang ac­tiv­i­ty and crime, we are that out­let, and they show more re­spect since some of us lived the same lives they are liv­ing."

But it has not been an easy task. Samuel said the strug­gle was re­al. "When some­thing hap­pens, say in Pic­ton, I have to make calls to see what hap­pened and to try to stop any planned re­tal­i­a­tion. Is all hours we are up. It takes the sim­plest things for a vi­o­lent out­burst to hap­pen. That's how we op­er­ate as the vi­o­lence in­ter­rupters."

As Samuel spoke at the Nel­son Street Plan­ning, many of the young men in the area shared their con­cerns. Many of them lament­ed that they feel ig­nored and com­plained about a lack of jobs.They did not want to be iden­ti­fied by name and re­fused to be pho­tographed, but were quite vo­cal about their con­cerns.

One young man said: "We need the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion to stop, I am a young man and I am not in crime but be­cause of my ad­dress I am a vic­tim, it's hard to go out there the same way as well since you are killed by war­ring fac­tion be­cause of where you live."

The man in his ear­ly 20s, added: "I want to see more op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the com­mu­ni­ties, this will curb the vi­o­lence, but if no­body can leave the com­mu­ni­ty then it will lead to the cur­rent out­come."

Project Rea­son pro­gramme co­or­di­na­tor, Mar­lon Ana­tol told the GML En­ter­prise Desk the fo­cus of Project Rea­son was to change the way the com­mu­ni­ty thinks, it is al­so aimed at pro­mot­ing peace with the ul­ti­mate goal of end­ing vi­o­lence and mur­ders.

Ana­tol said he has seen re­sults. "When last have you heard a spate of killings in East Port-of-Spain? We are on the ground, we at­tempt to in­ter­rupt the vi­o­lence. We are work­ing to win the trust of the res­i­dents, we as­sure them we don't work along with the po­lice." Ana­tol said they were do­ing work from Mor­vant to Bel­mont and it's a task for his staff since it's a lim­it­ed amount of them.

He said they have been able to achieve sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess "be­cause our peo­ple are from the com­mu­ni­ty," and they are tar­get­ing those who re­al­ly want to change and make a dif­fer­ence.

Touched by Pro­jec­tRea­son–Rasheed Seep­aul

One per­son touched by Project Rea­son is Rasheed Seep­aul, who spent sev­en years in prison for pos­ses­sion of a firearm with am­mu­ni­tion. Re­leased three months ago, Seep­aul ad­mit­ted that "the vi­o­lence is out of hand."

But he in­sist­ed that the sit­u­a­tion was not the re­sult of gang war­fare. He said: "I am not aware of the Ras­ta and Mus­lim City gang ri­val­ry but it makes things hard for any­one in the com­mu­ni­ty."

Project Rea­son has been work­ing with Seep­aul since his re­lease and is look­ing for ways to keep him out of a life of crime.

He is hap­py for the hand which has reached out to him. "I have five chil­dren and I want them to live a com­fort­able life. When I was in prison I learnt mu­sic, I won the Pris­on­er's Ca­lyp­so Com­pe­ti­tion, and now I am out here and I want to take it fur­ther and have al­ready start help­ing out at a pa­n­yard in the area," he said.

Neal "En­gine" Noel

Neal "En­gine" Noel, 59, was in­car­cer­at­ed for 18 years for sev­er­al of­fences rang­ing from kid­nap­ping to pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.He said "to change from a life of crime you need God, you have to make up your mind. Af­ter prison I re­alised the amount of wrong I did. It both­ers me to know the amount of peo­ple I dis­tressed and how trau­mat­ic it was for them."

Noel ad­mit­ted that when he came out of prison "bad peo­ple" en­cour­aged him to con­tin­ue his life of crime."But the right peo­ple came in and helped me to stay away from crime," he added.

Put on the right path, he said: "I start­ed talk­ing to the youths in the com­mu­ni­ty to leave a life of crime and I am liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny of that. While I was in jail I lost my moth­er and when I came out, with­in months, my fa­ther died. I lost most of my life, I was ar­rest­ed at 32, so put your­self in my shoes."

Be­fore Project Rea­son, Noel worked with oth­er com­mu­ni­ty groups and even shared his sto­ry in schools.He said "it was hard to get a job, peo­ple vic­timise you. Al­though I am not paid at Project Rea­son, I am do­ing what I love...to change my com­mu­ni­ty and it will hap­pen."

It's ear­ly days yet for peo­ple like Noel and Project Rea­son. But those in charge of Project Rea­son be­lieve that the mod­el will in fact make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in East Port-of-Spain.They mon­i­tor the pro­gramme and up­date sta­tis­tics every six months to see whether it's bring­ing the de­sired re­sult, which is a re­duc­tion in crime.

They hope that Project Rea­son can be ini­ti­at­ed in oth­er parts of the coun­try which are sim­i­lar­ly af­fect­ed by vi­o­lence and crime.