SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob says this coun­try has 134 crim­i­nal gangs whose ac­tiv­i­ties ac­count for most of the crimes that cit­i­zens face on a dai­ly ba­sis.

Ja­cob was speak­ing dur­ing the launch of the Gang Re­duc­tion And Com­mu­ni­ty Em­pow­er­ment (GRACE) pro­gramme at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

The pro­gramme, which is be­ing spon­sored by the Pan Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Fund and the Unit­ed States Bu­reau of In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics and Law En­force­ment Af­fairs, will run for the next 18 months. The pro­gramme has a bud­get of US$1.5 mil­lion.

In re­veal­ing some of the dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing po­lice of­fi­cers who try to solve gang-re­lat­ed crimes, Ja­cob said the po­lice have an idea of just how many gangs were op­er­at­ing in T&T.

“There are an es­ti­mat­ed 134 gangs with seg­ments in the dif­fer­ent parts of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In fact, there are six main gangs and I tend not to men­tion the names be­cause some of these gangs car­ry the names of some of our best and im­por­tant re­li­gious faiths,” the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er said.

He said po­lice have al­so been mon­i­tor­ing how many of the crimes that take place dai­ly were gang-re­lat­ed and the types of ac­tiv­i­ties these gangs par­tic­i­pate in.

“Our analy­sis has shown that 60 per cent of the mur­ders in Trinidad and To­ba­go is, in fact, gang-re­lat­ed and about 80 per cent of our shoot­ings and wound­ings are al­so gang-re­lat­ed. These gangs are now in­volved in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing drugs, rob­bery, ex­tor­tion, and land grab­bing, hu­man traf­fick­ing and most re­cent­ly, they are in­volved in the sale of il­le­gal guns,” he said.

And with gang-re­lat­ed crime so preva­lent, Ja­cob said many of­fi­cers were fear­ful of pros­e­cut­ing gang mem­bers.

“Gang-re­lat­ed crimes, by their very na­ture, is more dif­fi­cult to pros­e­cute than any oth­er cat­e­go­ry of crimes. Full of in­ter­con­nect­ing re­la­tion­ships and com­plex dy­nam­ics be­tween ri­val gangs to­day’s gang mem­bers and vic­tims of crimes in­ter­fere with the whole as­pect of our land­scape when it comes to crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Ja­cobs said to suc­cess­ful­ly hold gang mem­bers ac­count­able for their crimes, po­lice of­fi­cers need more train­ing.

He was hope­ful GRACE would the av­enue to pro­vide the of­fi­cers with just that.

“This pro­gramme in­cludes in­for­ma­tion on the var­i­ous as­pects of law en­force­ment, pros­e­cu­tion and co­op­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing, very im­por­tant, po­lice doc­u­men­ta­tion of gang af­fil­i­a­tion and ac­tiv­i­ties.”

GRACE will al­so pro­vide the re­sources for po­lice to cre­ate a “gang af­fil­i­a­tion” data­base, he said.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds al­so pre­sent­ed sta­tis­tics on gangs dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the launch.

“The es­ti­mat­ed num­ber of gang mem­bers for each year: 1,084 in 2015, 2,038 in 2016, 2,484 in 2017, 2,484 there­about for 2018 and (20)19, 2020, 1,056, 2021, 1,462 and the same for 2022,” Hinds said.

He said while the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides nu­mer­ous pro­grammes for young peo­ple and adults to be able to bet­ter them­selves, many were choos­ing crime as their en­ter­prise.

“There are those who notwith­stand­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of all the op­por­tu­ni­ties we de­scribed, who have for some strange and in­ex­plic­a­ble rea­son, cho­sen a path of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty and hurt­ing and vic­tim­is­ing oth­ers,” he said.

To fix this, Hinds said there needs to be a greater po­lice pres­ence and law en­force­ment across the coun­try. He said un­der­cov­er work in gangs was al­so need­ed, as he re­vealed gang mem­bers have tried to in­fil­trate the var­i­ous na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty arms over the years.

“They try to in­fil­trate law en­force­ment, so there is noth­ing wrong with law en­force­ment try­ing to in­fil­trate them,” he said.

Chargé d’Af­faires of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go Shante Moore al­so spoke dur­ing the launch.

Moore said the US was try­ing to step up to as­sist T&T with one of its biggest is­sues—gang vi­o­lence.

“Crim­i­nal gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go are re­spon­si­ble for a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of crim­i­nal of­fences and gang ac­tiv­i­ty is as­so­ci­at­ed with high homi­cide rates, cor­rup­tion, cit­i­zen in­se­cu­ri­ty, and in­creas­ing­ly with transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, such as firearm smug­gling and traf­fick­ing in per­sons,” he said.

Moore said gang mem­bers who are caught and im­pris­oned of­ten re­turn to their life of crime up­on their re­lease.

He said the GRACE pro­gramme would seek to solve the is­sues that lead to young­sters turn­ing to the gang lifestyle.

“Now, rather than fo­cus­ing sole­ly on ad­dress­ing the symp­toms of crime, like homi­cides and gang vi­o­lence, we must do more to ad­dress the root caus­es and this pro­gramme as­pires to do both. Lack of em­ploy­ment and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, the need for pro­tec­tion and safe­ty and the de­sire for up­ward so­cial mo­bil­i­ty are all fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gangs,” Moore said.

SEE AL­SO:

North­ern Di­vi­sion ac­counts for bulk of mur­ders

North­ern Di­vi­sion head says plans in place to dis­man­tle gangs

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