A pop­u­lar blog­ger and YouTu­ber says gangs in this coun­try have in­sist­ed that they are all about love, peace and fam­i­ly.

Cana­di­an con­tent cre­ator Chris Must, wide­ly known as Chris Must List, the YouTu­ber spent some time with lo­cal gang mem­bers and shared that per­spec­tive.

He has gar­nered mil­lions of views for his doc­u­ment­ed world trav­els. But in­stead of sole­ly en­joy­ing var­i­ous cuisines and sight­see­ing, Must spends his time tour­ing dis­tressed com­mu­ni­ties. 

Over the past month, Must has up­loaded nu­mer­ous vlogs de­tail­ing his ex­plo­ration of lo­cal gang-in­fest­ed neigh­bour­hoods.

On Mon­day, Must told The Morn­ing Brew host Ja­son Williams that he no­ticed gang mem­bers com­mon­ly de­scrib­ing them­selves as a ‘fam­i­ly’ or ‘or­gan­i­sa­tion.’

“Un­like any oth­er coun­try I’ve ever been to in my life, there are a few words that are used. ‘Love’, ‘peace’, ‘stig­ma.’ Over and over again. I’ve nev­er seen it. It's al­most like every­one came to­geth­er and re­hearsed what to say and it's amaz­ing to me,” Must said. 

In a re­cent 30-minute video post, Must doc­u­ment­ed his jour­ney to the hills of Tu­na­puna and his in­ter­ac­tion with mem­bers of the Re­sis­tance gang. 

Re­put­ed mem­bers of that gang were be­lieved to have been killed by po­lice of­fi­cers prob­ing the kid­nap­ping of dou­bles ven­dor An­isha Ho­sein-Singh last week. Singh was re­leased in Ca­roni af­ter be­ing held for five days.

Po­lice al­so sus­pect­ed that mem­bers of that same gang were re­spon­si­ble for set­ting up cam­eras aimed at spy­ing on the po­lice.

But through­out the video post­ed by Chris Must List, mem­bers (some armed with high-pow­ered ri­fles) ex­pressed the morals and val­ues of their group, dis­as­so­ci­at­ing them­selves from crime and vi­o­lence in T&T. 

“It is on­ly love we does deal with, not no gang thing. It's on­ly love,” said one gang mem­ber.

“All of we here does pro­vide for each oth­er and thing.

“The men out there, they don't like we. If you ask them why they don't like we for, they don't know,” said an­oth­er masked in­di­vid­ual. 

Must, who has al­so vis­it­ed oth­er gangs in Sea Lots, La Hor­quet­ta and Bel­mont said the gangs be­lieve they have been shunned by the gov­ern­ment, claim­ing to have been de­nied op­por­tu­ni­ties to come out of an im­pro­vised lifestyle and fur­ther per­pet­u­at­ing un­fair stereo­types.

In one video, a gang mem­ber said groups have no choice but to pro­tect their own, claim­ing to be ‘robbed’ of their hard earn­ings and op­por­tu­ni­ties by oth­er mem­bers of the pub­lic and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice (TTPS).

Must said that while he does not blame the gov­ern­ment, he be­lieves every­one in so­ci­ety has a part to play in the es­ca­la­tion of gangs. 

“I be­lieve that the gov­ern­ment does share a part of this. Par­ents prob­a­bly to me are the num­ber one per­sons to blame. And I mean right from birth. They’re re­spon­si­ble for keep­ing their chil­dren on the right path. I am not to blame the gov­ern­ment sole­ly. I don't have the an­swer. But what I keep hear­ing is that there are no op­por­tu­ni­ties,” he said.

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cials have stat­ed that there are over 140 gangs in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the TTPS, gang vi­o­lence ac­counts for some of the mur­ders in this coun­try.