Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day urged the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to bring gang lead­ers be­fore the courts if they are in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“If there are gang lead­ers as such, or per­sons in gangs, we took a long time in Par­lia­ment...we took two shots at it to pass An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion...the pur­pose of which is to al­low the po­lice, up­on be­ing sat­is­fied that these sit­u­a­tions ex­ist and these per­sons are en­gaged in crim­i­nal con­duct of that na­ture, that the po­lice would charge them,” Row­ley said.

This was Row­ley’s re­sponse to a ques­tion by Guardian Me­dia at Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, re­gard­ing mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts giv­en to sev­en re­put­ed gang lead­ers at two Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions. The con­tracts will now be the sub­ject of an ex­pen­sive au­dit by the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment that will al­so en­com­pass ac­tiv­i­ty at the 12 oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

The ques­tion was put to the PM two days af­ter the T&T Guardian pub­lished the ex­clu­sive Spe­cial Branch re­port which high­light­ed the names of sev­en re­put­ed gang lead­ers who ben­e­fit­ted from State con­tracts val­ued at $6 mil­lion from the Diego Mar­tin and Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tions, which trig­gered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein.

The re­port came one week af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith blamed the State for plac­ing funds in the hand of gang lead­ers, which he said had been fu­elling gang war­fare and homi­cides.

At the TTPS’ me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day, Grif­fith spoke about a shoot­ing in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the Ras­ta City and Mus­lim gangs in Laven­tille on Tues­day over a box drain con­tract.

At the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing with the TTPS by pro­vid­ing them with re­sources.

“And we ex­pect that if these facts are known then they should be charged. And not be­ing charged for get­ting a con­tract but be­ing charged for be­ing in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Un­der his ad­min­is­tra­tion, Row­ley said they made gang ac­tiv­i­ty a crim­i­nal act. To re­cruit peo­ple in a gang, Row­ley said was “now se­ri­ous charges. That was al­ways not so.”

He said the TTPS has the tools to go af­ter gang lead­ers and he ex­pect­ed the TTPS to bring forth ev­i­dence which some­times may take some time.

“Gath­er the ev­i­dence and the law is there to pros­e­cute such per­sons. There is no short cut. If in­for­ma­tion ex­ists where a per­son can be la­belled as a gang leader, then that per­son is fac­ing the jeop­ardy of that law...and that is what we ex­pect. So we are not go­ing to get in­volved.”