Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has re­spond­ed to a re­cent re­port from the UK Visas and Im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment de­tail­ing the num­ber of gangs in T&T, not­ing that there was some in­con­sis­ten­cy be­tween the in­for­ma­tion con­tained in the re­port and in­tel­li­gence lo­cal­ly.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia af­ter the 16th Meet­ing of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of the Caribbean Dis­as­ter and Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA) at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann’s, last Fri­day, Alexan­der said while he read the re­port, he did not have the time to crit­i­cal­ly as­sess it in any great de­tail.

How­ev­er, he con­firmed that while the re­port claimed there were 186 gangs op­er­at­ing in T&T, he had dif­fer­ent fig­ures.

“They prob­a­bly got their in­tel­li­gence from what­ev­er source, we have our in­tel­li­gence here. Now we live here, so we un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing here,” Alexan­der said.

“What­ev­er in­for­ma­tion they have at this time is not enough time for me to re­al­ly dis­sect it... I read it, but it’s not enough time for me to dis­sect it, for me to do an au­top­sy on it, but the fig­ures are dif­fer­ent to what we have present­ly.

“They... ap­par­ent­ly they said it was high­er, but we didn’t see that.”

When asked to clar­i­fy, Alexan­der main­tained that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties did not see this fig­ure.

The re­port was pub­lished on June 5 by UK Visas and Im­mi­gra­tion as part of its Coun­try Pol­i­cy and In­for­ma­tion Note se­ries and was de­signed pri­mar­i­ly to as­sist British of­fi­cials in eval­u­at­ing asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, crim­i­nal gangs re­main heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed in eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in and around Port-of-Spain and along the East-West Cor­ri­dor. The as­sess­ment es­ti­mates that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 186 gangs were op­er­at­ing in T&T as of 2023, with a com­bined mem­ber­ship of around 1,750 mem­bers. It linked those or­gan­ised crim­i­nal groups to rough­ly one-third of all mur­ders and in­volve­ment in a wide range of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing kid­nap­pings, armed rob­beries, ex­tor­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing and the il­le­gal firearms trade.

Among the most in­flu­en­tial groups iden­ti­fied were the Mus­lims and Ras­ta City gangs, which the re­port said serve as ma­jor pow­er cen­tres around which small­er gangs of­ten align.

One of the re­port’s more trou­bling find­ings con­cerns youth re­cruit­ment. It said gang mem­ber­ship is large­ly com­posed of young men from dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties, many with lim­it­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and un­sta­ble fam­i­ly back­grounds. Sources cit­ed in the doc­u­ment re­port­ed re­cruit­ment oc­cur­ring among chil­dren be­tween 12 and 16 years, in­clud­ing with­in schools. Gangs were al­so re­port­ed to re­cruit mem­bers from with­in the prison sys­tem. The re­port fur­ther notes that in­di­vid­u­als who refuse to join gangs, at­tempt to leave gang life, or open­ly chal­lenge gang au­thor­i­ty can be­come tar­gets for vi­o­lence. Fam­i­ly mem­bers of gang-af­fil­i­at­ed per­sons, as well as po­lice of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers, mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry and pros­e­cu­tors, were al­so iden­ti­fied as po­ten­tial tar­gets.

Al­though the UK as­sess­ment ac­knowl­edges that T&T pos­sess­es an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion and spe­cialised po­lice units ded­i­cat­ed to com­bat­ing or­gan­ised crime, it raised con­cerns about the ca­pac­i­ty of law en­force­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly con­tain the threat.

Re­fer­ring to re­cent con­ver­sa­tions with young peo­ple from dif­fer­ent ar­eas, in­clud­ing his con­stituen­cy of Tu­na­puna, Alexan­der said sev­er­al youths shared that they were will­ing to make a change in their com­mu­ni­ties for the bet­ter.

He, how­ev­er, im­plored them to be­gin by liv­ing more pos­i­tive, pro­duc­tive lifestyles, not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment was will­ing to help any­one who could demon­strate their will­ing­ness to re­nounce their crim­i­nal lifestyle.

“If you show me that for a sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of time, then I can ap­proach my lead­ers and say these young men de­serve that chance,” he said.

“Every­one is en­ti­tled to a sec­ond chance. The time has come for these young men to wake up and come out of that sys­tem they be­lieve in, where they be­lieve they at­tached to a num­ber and that num­ber caus­es them to com­mit crimes against their broth­ers and sis­ters. That’s not a part of who we are.”