By now, the au­thor­i­ties should re­alise that achiev­ing the ob­jec­tives of this State of Emer­gency (SoE) is a com­plex un­der­tak­ing giv­en the many gaps in their an­ti-gang strate­gies.

Al­though dozens of al­leged gang mem­bers have been de­tained, in­clud­ing sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers who are cur­rent­ly un­der house ar­rest, many of their un­der­world as­so­ciates re­main at large to con­tin­ue the killings, vi­o­lent rob­beries and oth­er crim­i­nal acts.

Just yes­ter­day, killers breached those SoE gaps to gun down Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ee Onel­la Parks.

Last week, the mur­ders of at­tor­ney Ku­nari Baksh and her hus­band Nasheed at their Cu­mu­to home, just days af­ter state pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor was gunned down out­side a church in Port-of-Spain, added to con­cerns for the safe­ty of mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty.

The re­al­i­ty is that killers in­tent on car­ry­ing out hits are still man­ag­ing to slip through cracks in law en­force­ment even in the height­ened state of alert in the coun­try.

It will, how­ev­er, take a Her­culean ef­fort to com­plete­ly erad­i­cate the crim­i­nal scourge that has in­fest­ed T&T.

At present, ef­forts are fo­cused on the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,269 mem­bers of the 95 gangs who have been spread­ing ter­ror and death across this coun­try. How­ev­er, there has not been as much fo­cus on the crit­i­cal area of pre­ven­tion — a key as­pect of any gang sup­pres­sion ef­fort.

In oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, mul­ti-faceted ear­ly pre­ven­tion pro­grammes have proven to be ef­fec­tive, pro­vid­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ben­e­fits than oth­er an­ti-gang in­ter­ven­tions.

Pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives tai­lored to suit T&T’s unique cul­tur­al and so­cial con­di­tions re­quire col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, So­cial Ser­vices and Youth De­vel­op­ment, tar­get­ed at the grow­ing num­ber of mar­gin­alised, dis­af­fect­ed young peo­ple who are join­ing gangs.

Crim­i­nal gangs have been at­tract­ing young men — and some young women — who feel they have been re­ject­ed by their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties, so they turn to those in­volved in crim­i­nal en­ter­prise for a sense of be­long­ing.

They are al­so be­ing drawn in by friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers al­ready in gangs or may join as a way to get re­spect, free­dom and in­de­pen­dence.

This coun­try is al­ready fac­ing a sig­nif­i­cant threat from the thou­sand gang­sters who have be­come en­trenched in com­mu­ni­ties and can adapt quick­ly to en­force­ment tac­tics, stay­ing sev­er­al steps ahead of lo­cal law en­force­ment. Gang sup­pres­sion must in­clude mea­sures to pre­vent them from adding to their num­bers in those com­mu­ni­ties.

Be­fore the up­surge in gang vi­o­lence that drove the coun­try’s mur­der count to record lev­els in 2022 and last year, the au­thor­i­ties had re­ceived in­tel­li­gence about crim­i­nal groups splin­ter­ing in­to more bru­tal en­ti­ties.

Fail­ure to ad­e­quate­ly re­spond re­sult­ed in the mass shoot­ings and bloody reprisals of the past sev­er­al months, bring­ing the na­tion to this point where an SoE had to be en­forced to pre­vent crim­i­nal reprisals that were im­mi­nent.

The fo­cus needs to be on dis­rupt­ing the mech­a­nisms that sus­tain crim­i­nal gangs, as well as tack­ling the is­sues of pover­ty, cor­rup­tion, and lack of op­por­tu­ni­ty that make it so easy for them to re­cruit new mem­bers.

Spe­cial ef­forts should be ex­tend­ed in the crime hotspots where dis­trust of law en­force­ment is so high that vic­tims and wit­ness­es are dis­cour­aged, or in­tim­i­dat­ed, from com­ing for­ward.

This will be a ma­jor un­der­tak­ing that must be sus­tained long af­ter the crime cri­sis is brought un­der con­trol but it will be well worth it in the long run.