Gangs, gang mem­ber­ship and gang ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T con­tin­ue to flour­ish.

Con­firm­ing this, but de­clin­ing to say ex­act­ly just how many gangs are op­er­at­ing in the coun­try, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith at­trib­uted the in­crease to the "un­ac­cept­able tac­tics em­ployed by peo­ple who con­tin­ue to ques­tion the judg­ment of the leg­is­la­tors in Par­lia­ment."

Re­veal­ing that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is now us­ing the num­ber of "shoot­ers" as a bench-mark to so­lid­i­fy this claim, Grif­fith shot down claims by a se­nior of­fi­cer that the last of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics re­lat­ing to the for­ma­tion and re­cruit­ment of gangs and gang mem­bers was in 2018.

The of­fi­cer said fig­ures for that year re­vealed a to­tal of 211 gangs op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and 24 in To­ba­go, with a to­tal of 2,484 gang mem­bers. Since then, the of­fi­cer claimed, no sta­tis­tics have be­come avail­able.

In 2017 the Crim­i­nal Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit (CGIU) which was main­ly re­spon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing and track­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty, was dis­man­tled and lat­er merged with the Or­gan­ised Crime Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau (OC­NFB), to form the Or­gan­ised Crime and In­tel­li­gence Unit (OCIU).

The OCIU was then dis­band­ed, with of­fi­cers be­ing draft­ed in­to the SIU.

Grif­fith said they have con­tin­ued to ac­quire da­ta from dif­fer­ent arms of the TTPS in­clud­ing the Spe­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (SIU), the Spe­cial Branch and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it has reached a point where the num­ber of gang mem­bers could have in­creased and now we have a point where gangs are ac­tu­al­ly us­ing so­cial me­dia to re­cruit more gang mem­bers.

"The num­ber of gangs can flour­ish and it has es­ca­lat­ed," Grif­fith said.

In Feb­ru­ary 2019 the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch re­port­ed that in 2006, there were 95 gangs with 1,269 mem­bers op­er­at­ing in T&T.

Ten years lat­er in 2016, that fig­ure rose to 172 gangs with 2,358 mem­bers.

Gun­men on the streets

On De­cem­ber 31, 2019, gun­men from a Sea Lots gang led a bloody ram­page in the cap­i­tal city af­ter they in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly opened fire on a maxi-taxi parked at the cor­ner of George and Prince streets.

When the smoke cleared, Lystra Her­nan­dez was killed while sit­ting in a maxi-taxi, nine oth­ers were in­jured, in­clud­ing a five-year-old boy.

This prompt­ed po­lice to lock down the city to ap­pre­hend the gun­men—two of whom were killed dur­ing a shoot-out with law en­force­ment.

A third man lat­er suc­cumbed to his in­juries at the hos­pi­tal. The shoot­ers from the Sea Lots gang had in­ten­tion­al­ly tar­get­ed in­no­cent peo­ple, po­lice in­tel­li­gence lat­er re­vealed, ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia sto­ry on Jan­u­ary 18 en­ti­tled, "Gun­men get big mon­ey to kill, cause may­hem."

A sim­i­lar gang­land-style shoot­ing oc­curred on Jan­u­ary 15 when gun­men al­leged­ly from the Mus­lim gang opened fire on two men and a teenaged girl at the cor­ner of Queen and Dun­can streets in Port-of-Spain. One of the men, po­lice said, had been a sus­pect­ed mem­ber of the Ras­ta City gang. The dead men were iden­ti­fied as Aaron "Max" Broomes and Kay­o­de "Toes" Donowa. The gun­men lat­er es­caped in the hills of Laven­tille af­ter po­lice had in­ter­cept­ed their car along the East­ern Main Road.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said "There is a new or­der op­er­at­ing on the ground."

He said the dif­fer­ences be­tween the "haves and have nots" had led to the es­ca­la­tion of in­ter-gang vi­o­lence. "Now, the dom­i­nant ma­jor­i­ty of gang vi­o­lence is with­in fac­tions at war with each oth­er."

Ac­cord­ing to on­line TTPS sta­tis­tics, there were a to­tal of 517 mur­ders in 2018; 495 in 2017; 462 in 2016; 420 in 2015; and 403 in 2014.

How­ev­er, with­out a break­down from the TTPS, it is not known how many of these mur­ders are gang-re­lat­ed.

De­spite the lack of da­ta, Grif­fith in­sist­ed, "The vast ma­jor­i­ty of homi­cides in this coun­try are based on per­sons who are known as shoot­ers in these gangs. We have about 800 shoot­ers and when you look at the num­ber of per­sons held by po­lice in the last three years, 323 were held with il­le­gal firearms and all were re­leased on their first hear­ing."

De­clar­ing the po­lice was do­ing all it could to ap­pre­hend peo­ple who con­tin­ued to es­cape le­gal con­se­quences un­der the guise of hu­man rights, Grif­fith de­clared, "It is a war zone."

Gangs and even splin­ter fac­tions can now be found in most, if not all com­mu­ni­ties across T&T.

Among the ar­eas that gangs can now be found in Ch­agua­nas; Tu­na­puna; San Juan/Barataria; Ari­ma; Care­nage; Mor­vant; Sea Lots; Beetham; Laven­tille; and Diego Mar­tin.

Figueira added, "As far as the busi­ness mod­el goes, you have to max­imise your earn­ings so the old mod­el where gangs would stick to cer­tain routes such as the East/West cor­ri­dor that start­ed in the sec­ond half of the 1960s, that is now passé.

"It is now max­i­mum ex­ploita­tion of the mar­ket­place as de­mand­ed by transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.”

Po­lice con­cerned about new dy­nam­ic de­vel­op­ing

Ques­tioned about the spate of killings cur­rent­ly sweep­ing T&T, the se­nior po­lice source said they are con­cerned about a new dy­nam­ic de­vel­op­ing—where Venezue­lan mi­grants are be­ing in­doc­tri­nat­ed in­to this coun­try’s gang cul­ture.

The of­fi­cer said, "The most im­por­tant dy­nam­ic we have on the gang land­scape is the in­tro­duc­tion of the Venezue­lans...

"There are no in­di­ca­tions that the Venezue­lans in gangs are the cause of the spate of mur­ders plagu­ing T&T, all in­for­ma­tion point to lo­cals as the main per­pe­tra­tors. The Venezue­lan gang mem­bers are learn­ing the Tri­ni un­der­world, so it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore we start to see some­thing from them."

He said it was in­cum­bent up­on the dif­fer­ent arms of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to work to­geth­er and de­vel­op plans and ini­tia­tives in the even­tu­al­i­ty that this new "TriV­en part­ner­ship ma­te­ri­alis­es in­to some­thing we can’t con­trol."

How­ev­er, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er dis­agreed as he said, "It is a very small per­cent­age of the homi­cides in this coun­try that has tak­en place through a link with the Venezue­lans. That is fear-mon­ger­ing based on per­cep­tion."

Of the 538 mur­ders record­ed in 2019, Grif­fith said it was just about 30 homi­cides which could be linked to Venezue­lans.

Last year a spe­cial po­lice re­port ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia in­di­cat­ed that po­lice had raised con­cerns about the in­fil­tra­tion of the Venezue­lan gang Evan­der in this coun­try and the po­ten­tial threats they posed in the crim­i­nal un­der­world.

In Ju­ly 2019, Figueira ex­pressed a sim­i­lar con­cern that lo­cal gangs had be­gun op­er­at­ing at a transna­tion­al lev­el.

Figueira said, "Gang­land is nev­er sta­t­ic. It sim­ply evolves and what is hap­pen­ing now is a new phase which is be­ing dri­ven by transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime."

He re­in­forced this last week as he stressed that "some of the Venezue­lans have joined gangs and some of them have formed their own gangs."

He said work must con­tin­ue with the tal­ly­ing of cur­rent gang sta­tis­tics.

Con­tin­u­ing next week