In re­cent weeks, alarms have been raised about a ter­ri­fy­ing in­crease in vi­o­lent home in­va­sions in Carlsen Field, Ch­agua­nas.

The crime wave en­gulf­ing that rur­al farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty since March is the lat­est in­di­ca­tor of on­go­ing crim­i­nal gang in­fil­tra­tion through­out the coun­try.

In­creas­ing­ly, gang­sters are us­ing home in­va­sions to ter­rorise fam­i­lies and plun­der homes and farms, adding fright­en­ing new di­men­sions to their crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es at a speed that seems to con­found the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and oth­er arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

In Carlsen Field, the rel­a­tive­ly long dis­tances be­tween neigh­bours present some law en­force­ment chal­lenges in terms of sur­veil­lance and re­sponse times, but even in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ur­ban ar­eas, the crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to hold an ad­van­tage over the po­lice.

And that’s the most wor­ry­ing part be­cause in T&T’s com­plex and ever-ex­pand­ing crim­i­nal land­scape, the re­al­i­ty is that the re­cent or­deal of am­putee Farz Mo­hammed and the 20 min­utes of ter­ror he and his fam­i­ly en­dured can hap­pen any­where in these twin is­lands.

Mo­hammed, 55, who lost his right leg to di­a­betes in 2019, was beat­en and the in­trud­ers even threat­ened to chop off his right hand, while his son Fawz was beat­en on the head with a gun butt and had to get stitch­es for the in­juries he suf­fered.

The har­row­ing de­tails of this fam­i­ly’s ex­pe­ri­ence with a trio of rob­bers, who were armed with guns and a ba­ton, mir­ror sev­er­al in­ci­dents that have oc­curred in oth­er parts of the coun­try.

Da­ta from the po­lice shows an in­crease in vi­o­lent home in­va­sions, not just in the TTPS Cen­tral Di­vi­sion where Carlsen Field is lo­cat­ed, but in To­ba­go, Port-of-Spain and large swathes of the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

There is al­so strong ev­i­dence that the gangs are up­ping their game well be­yond their fa­mil­iar crim­i­nal ter­rain of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing, or­gan­ised rob­bery, mo­tor ve­hi­cle lar­ce­ny, drug traf­fick­ing, coun­ter­feit­ing and hu­man smug­gling.

In ad­di­tion to the spike in home in­va­sions, there has been a rein­tro­duc­tion of kid­nap­ping for ran­som, added to the ex­tor­tion and pro­tec­tion rack­ets that have re­cent­ly be­come com­mon­place.

Crim­i­nal gang op­er­a­tions are much more so­phis­ti­cat­ed these days with tech­nol­o­gy added to their ar­se­nal, as proven by the re­cent dis­cov­ery of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars worth of elec­tron­ic equip­ment, in­clud­ing CCTV cam­eras and wire­less routers, il­le­gal­ly mount­ed on util­i­ty poles in the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

The cam­eras were record­ing live feeds of the St Joseph, Tu­na­puna and Arou­ca po­lice sta­tions. They were re­port­ed­ly in­stalled by a crim­i­nal gang based in east Trinidad and, not sur­pris­ing­ly, no ar­rests have been made in con­nec­tion with these dis­cov­er­ies and seizures.

Add that to the gang­sters’ easy ac­cess to firearms, smug­gled in­to the coun­try from crim­i­nal as­so­ciates in the Unit­ed States and South Amer­i­ca, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with the TTPS and the scan­dal-hit Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), and there is much cause for con­cern.

Chron­ic in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem damp­en every an­ti-crime re­sponse. Law en­force­ment is strug­gling to catch up with gangs, or even slow their evo­lu­tion in­to in­creas­ing­ly bru­tal, tech-savvy en­ti­ties.

With the main in­tel­li­gence agency in cri­sis and a po­lice de­tec­tion rate that is still sub­par, en­abling the most dan­ger­ous, vi­o­lent per­pe­tra­tors to freely roam the streets, there is an ur­gent need to over­haul the sys­tems used to track, cap­ture and con­vict.

The gangs are gain­ing too much ground.