Gail Alexan­der

Fol­low­ing in­creased gang war­fare last Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber, three se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are pop­u­lat­ing a gang data­base, “ac­quir­ing as­so­ciates of gangs”, iden­ti­fy­ing peo­ple of in­ter­est and seiz­ing firearms and nar­cotics.

But a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of mur­ders in the sit­u­a­tion re­sult­ed from con­flicts per­tain­ing to land, fa­mil­ial re­la­tion­ships and oth­er do­mes­tic is­sues.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds gave this in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to queries from UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

Mark, cit­ing in­creased homi­cides over last Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber as a re­sult of gang war­fare, sought mea­sures be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the TTPS to ad­dress this in high-risk ar­eas, in­clud­ing Laven­tille.

Hinds said to deal with the up­surge be­tween Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 2021, in­clud­ing mur­ders, the Po­lice Ser­vice im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al mea­sures:

Al­lo­ca­tion of ad­di­tion­al re­sources to di­vi­sion­al op­er­a­tions and in­ves­tiga­tive units, to im­prove re­sponse times and con­tribute to the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of vi­o­lent of­fend­ers;

Part­ner­ing with oth­er de­part­ments, agen­cies and stake­hold­ers to suc­cess­ful­ly en­hance the ca­pac­i­ty of in­ves­tiga­tive de­part­ments in man­ag­ing cas­es and in­creas­ing crime de­tec­tion;

In­creased pa­trols in East and Down­town Port-of-Spain dis­tricts, safe zones and oth­er ar­eas.

Hinds added there have al­so been joint stop and search ex­er­cis­es in col­lab­o­ra­tion with of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU), In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF), in East Port-of-Spain and oth­er ge­o­graph­i­cal ar­eas where gangs are known to op­er­ate.

“This mea­sure is aimed at pop­u­lat­ing a gang data­base, ac­quir­ing as­so­ciates of gangs, iden­ti­fy­ing per­sons of in­ter­est, ob­tain­ing bio­da­ta on gangs and seiz­ing firearms and nar­cotics; and con­tin­ued de­ploy­ment of com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing ini­tia­tives.”

These in­clude the pro­vi­sion of free le­gal clin­ics in col­lab­o­ra­tion with at­tor­neys to as­sist cit­i­zens in deal­ing with their le­gal is­sues; the do­na­tion of food, cloth­ing and pro­vi­sion of oth­er so­cial sup­port ser­vices to cit­i­zens; the open­ing of a Com­mu­ni­ty Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion Cen­tre in St Joseph to as­sist in re­duc­ing do­mes­tic con­flict and pro­vi­sion of per­son­al safe­ty tips/ mea­sures and mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment with res­i­dents, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er in­ter­est groups.

On an­oth­er query, Hinds said mea­sures to treat with at­tacks on mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and young per­sons in­clude: strength­ened part­ner­ships be­tween TTPS and Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice to en­sure in­creased in­tel­li­gence ca­pac­i­ty.

“This has led to the re­cent seizures of mo­bile phones and oth­er con­tra­band items at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca, as well as the ar­rest of rogue prison of­fi­cers,” Hinds added, de­tail­ing strength­ened youth out­reach ini­tia­tives.

On whether arrange­ments are be­ing made for the fam­i­lies of two prison of­fi­cers mur­dered last No­vem­ber to re­ceive $1 mil­lion dol­lars each in com­pen­sa­tion, Hinds said, “The Min­istry is guid­ed by the pol­i­cy ap­proved by Cab­i­net in 2016, as it re­lates to com­pen­sa­tion for of­fi­cers of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vice who are killed in the line of du­ty.”

He said there were cas­es where the of­fi­cer wasn’t on the ac­tu­al du­ty but com­pen­sa­tion was paid as they were a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer.

Hinds and Mark who sparred sev­er­al times were or­dered by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to apol­o­gise.