Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment was aware of, or par­tic­i­pat­ed in, a re­cent Unit­ed King­dom as­sess­ment on gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go, while dis­miss­ing at­tempts by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to blame the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for the coun­try’s gang prob­lem.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Beck­les re­spond­ed to com­ments made by Sturge fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a June 5 re­port by the UK Home Of­fice’s UK Visas and Im­mi­gra­tion di­vi­sion.

The re­port, part of its Coun­try Pol­i­cy and In­for­ma­tion Note (CPIN) se­ries used to guide asy­lum and hu­man rights de­ci­sions, es­ti­mat­ed that 186 gangs with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,750 mem­bers were op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go as of 2023.

The as­sess­ment found that gangs re­main con­cen­trat­ed in eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in and around Port-of-Spain and along the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

It al­so linked or­gan­ised crim­i­nal groups to rough­ly one-third of all mur­ders, as well as kid­nap­pings, armed rob­beries, ex­tor­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing, and the il­le­gal firearms trade.

In re­sponse to the re­port, Sturge said the sit­u­a­tion was the re­sult of “ten years of in­ac­tion” by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, and main­tained that the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing steps to tack­le gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence.

How­ev­er, Beck­les ar­gued that the re­port should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a new crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence as­sess­ment and ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment’s own da­ta dif­fered from the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by British au­thor­i­ties.

“Gov­ern­ment must tell us whether they were aware that this ex­er­cise was be­ing done,” Beck­les said. “They must tell us whether the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the UK Gov­ern­ment is dif­fer­ent from what they brought be­fore Par­lia­ment.”

She not­ed that the re­port was pre­pared pri­mar­i­ly as a guide for asy­lum and hu­man rights de­ci­sions in­volv­ing T&T, and said the PNM had nev­er de­nied the ex­is­tence of a gang prob­lem.

Beck­les al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing in­tim­i­da­tion to se­cure sup­port for its poli­cies, link­ing the is­sue to re­cent com­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­gard­ing in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors who op­posed Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader re­newed calls for the Prime Min­is­ter to ei­ther iden­ti­fy the sen­a­tors she sug­gest­ed had sought favours in ex­change for sup­port­ing leg­is­la­tion or with­draw the al­le­ga­tion al­to­geth­er.

“If there is any shred of truth in what the Prime Min­is­ter has said, then why has there been no re­port to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er or the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion?” Beck­les asked.

She fur­ther con­tend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready re­lied on gang-re­lat­ed in­tel­li­gence when jus­ti­fy­ing the cur­rent state of emer­gency, ar­gu­ing that of­fi­cials should not sug­gest the UK re­port con­tained in­for­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly un­known to them.

Beck­les al­so chal­lenged what she de­scribed as Gov­ern­ment at­tempts to por­tray gang ac­tiv­i­ty as be­ing con­fined to tra­di­tion­al­ly PNM-sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties, not­ing that re­cent mur­ders had al­so oc­curred in ar­eas out­side those re­gions.

She said the key ques­tion for cit­i­zens re­mains pub­lic safe­ty.

“The test for the nor­mal cit­i­zen is: do you feel safer now? The re­sponse from the pop­u­la­tion is no, and the Gov­ern­ment has a fail­ing grade,” she said.