Some­thing has to be done in places like Sea Lots and Las Cuevas to stop res­i­dents from sup­port­ing crim­i­nal fig­ures.

The type of sup­port some peo­ple in those PNM “hotspot” com­mu­ni­ties re­cent­ly gave al­leged crim­i­nal fig­ures in their midst hasn’t gone un­no­ticed by MPs Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald.

Gads­by-Dol­ly’s is con­sid­er­ing mea­sures to pro­vide the sort of sup­port young peo­ple in such ar­eas re­quire be­fore they’re drawn to fig­ures like Vaugh “Sand­man” Mieres and Aki­ni “Dole” Adams and the gang cul­ture.

Mieres, 46, his part­ner, Ali­ta De­here, 50, and two body­guards were killed by as­sailants who stormed at Mieres’ Las Cuevas com­pound on Ju­ly 25. Dur­rel “Shorto” Ray­mond ap­peared in court on Fri­day charged with their mur­ders.

Po­lice told Guardian Me­dia said the search is con­tin­u­ing for sev­en oth­er shoot­ers who were said to be part of the “hit” team.

Adams was re­port­ed­ly killed in a shootout with po­lice in Sea Lots hours af­ter the Las Cuevas mur­ders. It’s al­leged he was want­ed for ques­tion­ing in the re­cent mur­ders of the sev­en Cen­tral fish­er­men. Oth­er re­ports were that it was con­nect­ed to Mieres’ mur­der.

Adams was giv­en a colour­ful send-off on Tues­day and Wednes­day in Sea Lots.

Last Fri­day, sev­er­al black-clad mourn­ers—some trans­port­ed by max­is—turned up for the fu­ner­als of Mieres and De­here at Las Cuevas’ St Michael’s Chapel. Some res­i­dents came out to watch the ar­rivals and the bat­tal­ion of po­lice pho­tog­ra­phers, video­g­ra­phers and of­fi­cers record­ing and mon­i­tor­ing the at­ten­dees. Po­lice of­fi­cers were check­ing ve­hi­cles from the “Pil­lars” en­ter­ing the Mara­cas route and fur­ther along the way

Near the chapel, a mid­dle-aged man made it clear to a fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer stand­ing next to him shel­ter­ing rain: “I ent from no gang, I from here and I come.”

Af­ter the two Clarke and Bat­too hears­es ar­rived and be­fore the cas­kets were tak­en in­to the church, they parked near a green house. Sev­er­al black-clad women from the area ap­proached look­ing sad. A man watch­ing the hears­es roll by, mut­tered an­gri­ly: “They kill mih fad­der, they kill mih fad­der.”

The fu­ner­al took place across the val­ley from Mieres’ sprawl­ing green man­sion fac­ing east on the ridge above the vil­lage. The com­pound has clear views of Las Cuevas and Mara­cas. Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials said the mur­ders had in­volved al­most 35 min­utes of shots which would have been heard in the vil­lage lo­cat­ed be­low.

In 2017, Gov­ern­ment warned that gar­ri­son type-be­hav­iour was de­vel­op­ing in T&T where res­i­dents of com­mu­ni­ties sup­port­ed crim­i­nal fig­ures in their midst.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, in a 2014 af­fi­davit, said since 1999 T&T had ex­pe­ri­enced the de­vel­op­ment and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of gangs whose ori­gin was found, not on­ly in the com­mis­sion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty but “in the need of some per­sons, es­pe­cial­ly youth in high-risk ar­eas, to have some sense of be­long­ing.” Since then, gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty has per­me­at­ed al­most every sphere of T&T crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

St Ann’s East MP

Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, in whose con­stituen­cy Mieres lived, said the sit­u­a­tion where some in Las Cuevas ap­peared to sup­port him would have been dif­fi­cult to avoid.

“It’s a close-knit com­mu­ni­ty. Peo­ple are like fam­i­ly and it would have been dif­fi­cult for them to con­sid­er this per­son as dan­ger­ous and easy for them to see him as a male role mod­el, es­pe­cial­ly when such fig­ures may be ab­sent,” she said.

“So it falls to the com­mu­ni­ty and Gov­ern­ment to fill the gaps, for ex­am­ple, re­gard­ing lack of male teach­ers in schools in such ar­eas. That’s a se­ri­ous in­ter­ven­tion that must be ex­am­ined. There are many fe­male teach­ers, not as many males, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas which need them as role mod­els and in oth­er streams where such role mod­els are al­so ur­gent­ly re­quired.”

She said con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to pro­grammes like the Mil­i­tary Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Pro­gramme (MY­PART) for at-risk youths and My­Part (youth skills train­ing) pro­gramme and oth­ers the iso­lat­ed North Coast ar­eas.

“Plus one has to tar­get par­tic­i­pants ear­li­er since they might be drawn in­to the ‘easy life’ young if neg­a­tive in­flu­ences are strong. We’re dis­cussing all of this in a whole-of-Gov­ern­ment ap­proach to se­cure youths be­fore they grav­i­tate oth­er­wise. So in a sense, this in­ci­dent has brought the mat­ter to the fore,”

Port of Spain South MP

Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, in whose con­stituen­cy Adams was based, said the Sea Lots com­mu­ni­ty is very con­cerned about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

“They’re al­so a very close-knit com­mu­ni­ty and there are al­so lots of ques­tions on what ex­act­ly hap­pened but no­body can say.

“I went there re­cent­ly and told them don’t get in con­fu­sion with po­lice and if they did that they’d have noth­ing to fear. We don’t up­hold vi­o­lence, so it’s a mat­ter we’ll have to al­low the law to take its course with and al­low po­lice to do their work—there’s no room in this for politi­cians,” she said

Mc­Don­ald is proud of the fact that in the 12 years she has rep­re­sent­ed the area, she has tak­en no sides be­tween the Mus­lims gang, which con­trol the north­ern side of her area, and Ras­ta City which con­trols the south­ern side.

“And I’ll nev­er take sides,” she said.

Sand­man’s at­tor­ney

Mieres’ at­tor­ney Mario Mer­rit sees the need for manda­to­ry two-year pro­grammes to guide young peo­ple away from neg­a­tive in­flu­ences and “re­set” their minds. He said he had known his client for 18 years and some in Las Cuevas re­mem­bered him do­ing some good which was how he won their sup­port.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, if the Gov­ern­ment wants to make an im­pact, you have to do the same. We’ve been hear­ing about gangs, con­tracts, etc, for years to get rid of gang cul­ture re­quires re­al ef­fort and na­tion­al ser­vice to re­con­di­tion minds is part of it—teach­ing youths to build, not de­stroy. This isn’t a lost gen­er­a­tion, they need to be re­shaped.”

Mer­rit said the re­cent­ly passed Bail (Amend­ment) Bill won’t be enough to put a dent in crime since as­pects con­cern­ing gang cul­ture and youths, as well as is­sues re­gard­ing the courts will im­pede progress.

“It’s sim­ply a knee-jerk re­ac­tion, kick­ing the can down the road. It won’t work un­less core is­sues are ad­dressed,” he said.

“The ju­di­cial sys­tem is clogged. Un­less it’s cleared you must put peo­ple on bail and if they’re ‘in’ for 120 days, they’ll be out af­ter. Al­so re­mov­ing a judge’s right to de­ter­mine case by case doesn’t make sense. There are on­ly a hand­ful of crim­i­nal at­tor­neys. We al­so need more courts which aren’t enough or work long enough to han­dle case­loads. I’d sug­gest­ed courts work un­til 8 pm, get con­tract staff and han­dle lighter cas­es then, that don’t re­quire much po­lice se­cu­ri­ty. “

Who takes over gangs now?

Fol­low­ing the buri­als of Adams, Mieres and De­here, se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are mon­i­tor­ing what un­der­world shifts will be oc­cur­ring in crim­i­nal gangs

Po­lice sources said the usu­al pat­tern in the deaths of sus­pect­ed play­ers is the re­place­ment by an­oth­er, or at times a pow­er play for the “post” by am­bi­tious as­so­ciates who are not in line for suc­ces­sion.

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cials said the north and south mar­itime ju­ris­dic­tions where both al­leged­ly op­er­at­ed are “all con­nect­ed” and the re­cent is­sue with Venezue­lans flee­ing the South Amer­i­can main­land in the last two years opened up a wind­fall of “op­por­tu­ni­ty” for such op­er­a­tors and would have strength­ened ties with sim­i­lar el­e­ments on the Venezue­lan side—es­pe­cial­ly in drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing

“How­ev­er the re­cent Venezue­lan reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise—which in­clud­ed fin­ger­print­ing—would have pro­vid­ed law en­force­ment with in­for­ma­tion on cer­tain things,” a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial said.

“One of the very re­cent is­sues we’ve not­ed aris­ing from the il­le­gal trades is the prac­tice of peo­ple be­ing pawned. This oc­curs when some­one who is in the busi­ness can­not pay up to the oth­er par­ty and some­one valu­able to the debtor or con­nect­ed to them is held by the oth­er par­ty un­til the debtor can pay or the per­son pawned is made to work off the per­son’s debt.”

BOX

BIGGEST GANGS—NORTH/WEST COM­MU­NI­TIES

° 2014 sur­veil­lance by the Crim­i­nal Gang in­ves­ti­ga­tion unit re­vealed work­ing al­le­giances had formed among gangs to fa­cil­i­tate drugs/arms traf­fick­ing.

° In 2014, ex COP Williams said 92 gangs were iden­ti­fied op­er­at­ing through­out the TTPS’ nine ge­o­graph­i­cal di­vi­sions with es­ti­mat­ed 1,500 gang mem­bers. High­est con­cen­tra­tion—Port-of-Spain and North­ern Di­vi­sions. By 2016, the largest in­crease in gang ac­tiv­i­ty was in the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

° In 2017 An­ti Gang Bill de­bate AG Faris Al-Rawi said up to No­vem­ber 2017, po­lice con­firmed a to­tal of 211 gangs with a to­tal gang mem­ber­ship of 2,459 —a 129 per cent in­crease over 2014 with an in­crease in gang mem­bers by 36 per cent. He gave list­ing for the types in­clud­ing Mus­lims, Ras­ta City, and oth­ers and num­bers.

° The fig­ures in 2017—West­ern Di­vi­sion (49 gangs, 533 mem­bers), Port-of-Spain (41 gangs, 574 mem­bers), North East­ern (15 gangs, 256 mem­bers) Cen­tral Di­vi­sion (ten gangs, 106 mem­bers), South­ern (19 gangs, 202 mem­bers), East­ern (nine gangs, 121 mem­bers), North­ern (23 gangs, 324 mem­bers), South-West­ern (21 gangs, 178 mem­bers), To­ba­go (24 gangs, 190 mem­bers).

° The AG said gangs have been iden­ti­fied by street names, gang lead­ers and mem­bers and gar­ri­son-type be­hav­iour—com­mu­ni­ties sup­port­ing gangs—was de­vel­op­ing in T&T.

° In 2017, Laven­tille West MP Fitzger­ald Hinds said gang cul­ture was creep­ing in­to sev­er­al Laven­tille West schools where some eight and nine-year-olds were show­ing such signs. Hinds said there were 42 gangs in his con­stituen­cy, com­pris­ing Ras­ta City and “Mus­lim” units and youths were be­ing used by more ma­ture peo­ple es­tab­lished as large pow­er­ful “com­mu­ni­ty” fig­ures. Hinds said in the Mus­lim el­e­ment “broth­ers” were deal­ing with guns and drugs, dom­i­nat­ing var­i­ous “blocks.” But oth­er “broth­ers” stood up to them, giv­ing birth to Ras­ta City “ver­sus” Mus­lims fric­tion.

° Hinds said sta­tis­tics show gangs be­yond Laven­tille: in Pe­nal, Siparia, Mara­bel­la Train­line, Fyz­abad, Ce­dros, To­ba­go, Cou­va, En­ter­prise, Morne Di­a­blo.