Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

More young Afro-Trinida­di­an males are dy­ing com­pared to males in any oth­er age group or eth­nic­i­ty.

In 2023, 136 Afro-Trinida­di­ans (30 years old and un­der) were mur­dered, while 23 In­do-Trinida­di­ans of the same age brack­et were killed, ac­cord­ing to da­ta pro­vid­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

This means that 491 per cent more Afro-Trinida­di­an males (30 years old and un­der) are mur­dered than In­do-Trinida­di­an males of the same age.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s cal­cu­la­tions of the 2023 fig­ures, an Afro-Trinida­di­an male of that age group was mur­dered, on av­er­age, every three days and an In­do-Trinida­di­an of that group was mur­dered every 16 days.

Across all age groups and sex­es, an Afro-Trinida­di­an is mur­dered every day while an In­do-Trinida­di­an is mur­dered every three-and-a-half days.

The sta­tis­tics re­quest­ed from the TTPS in­clud­ed the races, sex­es, ages and lo­ca­tions of all mur­der vic­tims in 2002 and 2023.

The da­ta re­vealed that in 2023, ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en out of every ten mur­der vic­tims were Afro-Trinida­di­ans (65 per cent), while two out of every ten vic­tims were In­do-Trinida­di­ans (19 per cent), 14 per cent were ‘mixed’ and one per cent were Venezue­lan na­tion­als.

The av­er­age age of a mur­der vic­tim in 2022 and 2023 was 37 years old.

In 2023, 63 per cent of all mur­der vic­tims were be­tween 20 years old to 39 years old, while six per cent of vic­tims were be­tween one year old and 19 years old.

Nine­ty per cent of vic­tims were male and ten per cent were fe­male.

Over both years, Ari­ma was found to be the ‘most-mur­der­ous’ place, ac­count­ing for nine per cent of all mur­ders—110 mur­ders.

Port-of-Spain was the sec­ond-most mur­der­ous place with 69 mur­ders, fol­lowed by Laven­tille/Mor­vant in third with 67 mur­ders.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2011 cen­sus—the most re­cent—East In­di­ans ac­count­ed for 35.4 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, Africans—34.2 per cent and Mixed—22.8 per cent.

The State has turned its back on young Black men—David Muham­mad

Founder and di­rec­tor of the Black Agen­da Project, Dr David Muham­mad, has de­vot­ed much of his life to at­tempt­ing to up­lift young men from mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties in East Port-of-Spain, par­tic­u­lar­ly young Afro-Trinida­di­an men.

Some of the young men he men­tors were, and in a few cas­es are, gang mem­bers, but he re­fus­es to write them off as lost caus­es. He be­lieves that too many youths, es­pe­cial­ly Afro-Trinida­di­ans, have been aban­doned and scorned by so­ci­ety.

“The na­tion­al ne­glect and the na­tion­al scorn that the State has com­plete­ly turned its back on our young Black men, in par­tic­u­lar, in our so­ci­ety … And with young peo­ple be­ing tar­get­ed by gangs—in par­tic­u­lar, to store il­le­gal firearms on the premise that they are less like­ly to be stopped and searched or ap­pre­hend­ed—it has roped them in­to this cul­ture even ear­li­er and adds to the doom that we are lament­ing over.

“We tend to have these sen­sa­tion­alised views, call­ing for a par­tic­u­lar mea­sure—the hang­man, a state of emer­gency or joint pa­trols, or leg­is­la­tion—but if we think about it, we have a 2017 gang re­port that left us star­tled by the num­ber of teenagers in­volved in vi­o­lent crime. Yet, here we are in 2024 again mar­vel­ling over the num­ber of teenagers in­volved in vi­o­lent crimes.

“When we look at the 2017 re­port, many of the peo­ple who com­mit­ted the act of mur­der in 2023 and 2024 would have been 11 years old at the time when the last ma­jor gang re­ports came out, but sev­en years ago, when that re­port came out, we were still ob­sessed with these catch the crim­i­nal, lock up the crim­i­nal and throw-away-the-key kind of ap­proach, with­out, at that time, pay­ing at­ten­tion to what was hap­pen­ing with young men who were nine, ten and 11 years old.

“It’s as though we sit back and watch young boys be­come teenagers, and then from teenagers be­com­ing young adults who be­gin to com­mit these types of crimes and then pay at­ten­tion to them as a de­mo­graph­ic prob­lem for the first time in their lives. If more at­ten­tion was paid to them when they were nine, ten or 11 years old, maybe we would have less of a prob­lem now that they are 18, 19 or 20 years old,” Dr Muham­mad lament­ed.

‘Es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty fu­elled by politi­cians, po­lit­i­cal sys­tem’

Dr Muhammed be­lieved that the es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty among at-risk youth is fu­elled by politi­cians and a po­lit­i­cal sys­tem which he de­scribes as among the worst in the civilised world. He said its ad­ver­sar­i­al na­ture places so­lu­tions to prob­lems like crime as a sec­ondary pri­or­i­ty be­hind the ad­vance­ment of a par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests.

“I am not say­ing, and I will not say, that our politi­cians do not care, but what I am con­vinced of is that they care more about their po­lit­i­cal sur­vival amid so much cul­pa­bil­i­ty about what’s go­ing wrong. The key fo­cus is to con­tin­ue re­cy­cling and in­tro­duc­ing new strate­gies to re­main in of­fice a bit longer, even if it means at the ex­pense of the so­cial cri­sis that we are see­ing with­in our so­ci­ety.

“I think our po­lit­i­cal pet­ti­ness is start­ing to hurt the coun­try where it is more a ques­tion of who I like and who I dis­like; who will get cred­it and who will not get cred­it; who will look good or will end up look­ing bad. You have so much im­pres­sion man­age­ment, at­tempts to si­lence voic­es that may be speak­ing the truth if that truth does not show them up in a com­pli­men­ta­ry light, and per­sis­tent re­cy­cling of the same bold elit­ist favourites who get na­tion­al mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­rich them­selves. It has be­come our cul­ture to make these things a pri­or­i­ty and it’s all man­i­fest­ing it­self in the ne­glect of our young men,” the au­thor said.

Com­mu­ni­ties in des­per­ate need of help—British study

In 2019, an as­sess­ment of gang-re­lat­ed homi­cides and po­lice cor­rup­tion in T&T com­mis­sioned by the Her Majesty’s In­spec­torate of Con­stab­u­lary and Fire & Res­cue Ser­vice re­port­ed that T&T’s spike in vi­o­lence was due large­ly to gang vi­o­lence car­ried out by and against young men, pri­mar­i­ly of African de­scent, us­ing guns.

“Re­searchers asked a gang leader why so many young peo­ple in Trinidad are shot and killed. He re­spond­ed by say­ing, ‘It’s a rank­ing thing’. He ex­plained that for the young men in his com­mu­ni­ty, re­spect is a se­ri­ous is­sue and dis­re­spect­ing the wrong per­son can get you shot.

A sec­ond gang leader told the re­searchers that a dead­ly gang war had start­ed over “small talk”, a term he used to de­scribe pet­ty dis­putes. A third gang leader told the re­searchers that a gang war start­ed be­cause he heard a mem­ber of an­oth­er gang say­ing dis­re­spect­ful things about him (Katz, Maguire & Choate, 2011). These dy­nam­ics are con­sis­tent with the no­tion that a dan­ger­ous street cul­ture has arisen in T&T; one in which young men are high­ly sen­si­tive to their so­cial sta­tus and re­solve per­ceived acts of dis­re­spect us­ing vi­o­lence.

“There are com­mu­ni­ties that could ben­e­fit from a thought­ful mix of ev­i­dence-based pre­ven­tion, in­ter­ven­tion, and sup­pres­sion strate­gies. They are com­mu­ni­ties that are in des­per­ate need of help,” the body which has statu­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the in­spec­tion of British po­lice forces re­port­ed.

‘More needs to be done’

In Ju­ly 2020, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the for­ma­tion of a Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee (CRC) in the af­ter­math of com­mu­ni­ty un­rest in East Port-of-Spain fol­low­ing the shoot­ing deaths of three men in Mor­vant by po­lice of­fi­cers. The com­mit­tee, led by Dr An­tho­ny Watkins, was giv­en a man­date to ex­am­ine is­sues of at-risk youth and fac­tors neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Among oth­er things, the com­mit­tee re­port­ed/pro­posed the fol­low­ing:

• The es­tab­lish­ment of a net­work of min­istries/agen­cies that de­liv­er ser­vices to spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties as a means to max­imise the im­pact of scarce re­sources and to co-or­di­nate ac­tiv­i­ties.

• The CRC has made sig­nif­i­cant first steps in bring­ing key cor­po­rate bod­ies to­geth­er to dis­cuss their Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, their role and in­ter­ven­tions in the com­mu­ni­ties.

• The CRC has en­gaged with the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee and ex­plored the pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­hanc­ing com­mu­ni­ty aware­ness of its his­to­ry. These dis­cus­sions need to be deep­ened and more sources of in­for­ma­tion iden­ti­fied.

• They pro­posed to con­tin­ue en­gage­ment with the com­mit­tee and with Pan Trin­ba­go to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing tour and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for res­i­dents and mem­bers of the steel­band move­ment res­i­dent in the area.

One of the things re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed to the CRC was the way the com­mu­ni­ty is por­trayed through na­tion­al me­dia chan­nels with em­pha­sis con­tin­u­ous­ly placed on the neg­a­tive el­e­ments.

As a re­sult, they pro­posed a “From the Com­mu­ni­ty of ...” se­ries—sto­ries of in­di­vid­u­als and youth groups from the com­mu­ni­ty that have con­tributed to so­ci­ety pos­i­tive­ly and to the com­mu­ni­ty.

There have been in­di­vid­u­als from the com­mu­ni­ty who have achieved great suc­cess and have been iden­ti­fied by the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

They pro­posed en­gag­ing these in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives in two ways: 1) De­vel­op­ing their ini­tia­tives with sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties and 2) Sup­port­ing ini­tia­tives al­ready in place.

The sto­ries of stig­ma and bias are re­peat­ed with fre­quen­cy. Even if ex­ag­ger­at­ed, the re­al­i­ty is one of trau­ma and de­pri­va­tion. These per­cep­tions and the re­lat­ed in­ter­ac­tions take place be­tween the com­mu­ni­ties and var­i­ous ex­ter­nal agen­cies and sec­tors. Res­i­dents and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty are some­times wit­ness­es to these in­ter­ac­tions which oc­cur on sev­er­al fronts.

In May 2022, pres­i­dent of the Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil in Sea Lots, Sher­ma Anne Le Blanc, told Guardian Me­dia that she has not seen any last­ing im­pact of the CRC’s work in the com­mu­ni­ty. She said that the on­ly thing the CRC did was to fa­cil­i­tate a pre-school in Sea Lots get­ting over 20 com­put­er tablets in 2020.

“When the CRC came to us, we spoke about the ills in Sea Lots. We spoke about the dis­crim­i­na­tion we suf­fer. We don’t have the prop­er in­fra­struc­ture here. We have a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre here, but it is not out­fit­ted and so it dis­qual­i­fies us from cer­tain pro­grammes,” she said.

Laven­tille ac­tivist Ju­dith Boyce had some com­plaints but praised some as­pects of the CRC.

“I was part of the ‘We Say Yes’ pro­gramme, which was an ini­tia­tive of the CRC which helps young peo­ple do on­line ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes. That is a great pro­gramme for the chil­dren of Bev­er­ly Hills.

“We need more pro­grammes, we need more jobs for the youths. Many youths are out there, and they are not do­ing any­thing. I would like to see more youths em­ployed. Over the last two years since the CRC was set up, the sit­u­a­tion re­al­ly did not get worse, but it did not get bet­ter ei­ther,” she said, adding that more needs to be done.