Gail Alexan­der

The Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency’s fore­cast for 2020 had not­ed it was ex­pect­ed crim­i­nal gangs may have con­tin­ued to spread out­wards from tra­di­tion­al ar­eas and ei­ther at­tempt to in­flu­ence the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion elec­toral process “by form­ing strate­gic al­liances with prospec­tive can­di­dates or oth­er in­flu­en­tial per­sons.”

This is stat­ed in the SSA’s 2019 re­port.

The SSA’s 2019-2021 re­ports were laid in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, plus the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Re­ports 2018-2021.

The SSA de­vel­ops strate­gic in­tel­li­gence, pre­pares crime pre­ven­tion strate­gies and ad­vis­es on pol­i­cy for­ma­tion.

The re­port stat­ed in 2019, se­ri­ous crime, nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, eco­nom­ic/food se­cu­ri­ty, il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, re­turnee For­eign Ter­ror­ist Fight­ers, do­mes­tic Is­lam­ic State and the Lev­ant (ISIL) - in­spired rad­i­calised en­thu­si­asts and pub­lic cor­rup­tion con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate the se­cu­ri­ty land­scape and de­mand re­sources.

“While the State man­aged some of these threats, many ef­fects may yet man­i­fest in 2020,” the re­port not­ed.

Giv­en its analy­sis of 2019, SSA’s fore­cast for 2020 not­ed gen­er­al elec­tions bells and, “It is ex­pect­ed that crim­i­nal gangs may con­tin­ue to spread out­wards from tra­di­tion­al ar­eas and may ei­ther at­tempt to in­flu­ence the elec­toral process by form­ing strate­gic al­liances with prospec­tive can­di­dates or oth­er in­flu­en­tial per­sons. Cor­rup­tion, ev­i­dent by the wan­ton use of wire­less de­vices with­in the prison sys­tem are just symp­toms of a larg­er is­sue that crim­i­nal gangs present a re­al threat to the State and will con­tin­ue to com­pro­mise those in au­thor­i­ty through in­tim­i­da­tion and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their true mo­tives.”

The re­port not­ed, “In 2019, T&T record­ed an in­crease in the num­ber of prison es­capees. As such, the SSA has con­tin­ued to be ac­tive­ly in­volved in the re­cap­ture of these es­capees; de­tec­tion of mur­ders com­mit­ted by gang mem­bers on the or­ders of lead­ers and has af­fect­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the op­er­a­tions of mi­grant smug­glers and drug traf­fick­ers.”

The SSA not­ed in 2019 mul­ti­ple mur­ders as gang mem­bers ex­act­ed re­venge on each oth­er.

Of the nine po­lice di­vi­sions, North­ern, Port-of-Spain, Cen­tral, West­ern and South­ern Di­vi­sions re­mained some of the most dead­ly.

Not­ing younger gang mem­bers, the re­port added, “This younger group has proven to be more vi­o­lent and brazen thus are more in­flu­en­tial. In­fu­sion of gang cul­ture with dance­hall mu­sic is an is­sue for spe­cif­ic age groups. Mu­sic has al­lowed a medi­um for gang mem­bers to dis­play wealth and oth­er ill-got­ten gains via so­cial me­dia al­low­ing for glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the il­le­gal lifestyle—al­so ef­fec­tive re­cruit­ment strat­e­gy.”

The re­port not­ed that the “per­vad­ing pres­ence of mi­grants both un­doc­u­ment­ed and per­mit­ted as per the Venezue­lan re­al­i­ty” con­tin­ued to in­flu­ence the re­tail/ex­port nar­cotics trade.

This re­al­i­ty con­tin­ues to dri­ve the crim­i­nal­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with the trade. While lo­cals con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate the trade, there are in­di­ca­tions of a thrust by some Venezue­lans and Columbians to es­tab­lish/con­trol whole­sale nar­cot­ic op­er­a­tions in some parts of T&T.”

Apart from the de­mand for Vin­cent­ian and Venezue­lan mar­i­jua­na, co­caine traf­fick­ing con­tin­ued.

Use of Am­phet­a­mine type stim­u­lants in­clud­ing Ly­ser­gic Acid Di­ethy­lamide (LSD), Ec­sta­sy and oth­er un­known nar­cotics be­came more ap­par­ent. In­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ed six of the 50 most po­tent pills world­wide were avail­able lo­cal­ly then.

Al­so, “As the Venezue­lan cri­sis per­sists, sev­er­al im­mi­grants are ini­tial­ly smug­gled to T&T then forced in­to labour. Pass­ports and oth­er of­fi­cial doc­u­ments are con­fis­cat­ed and per­sons be­come vic­tims of Hu­man Traf­fick­ing. Fe­male mi­nors are forced in­to the il­le­gal sex trade and forcibly be­come in­volved in the con­sump­tion of drugs.

Some crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions utilise Ke­t­a­mine to en­sure sex­u­al com­pli­ance for un­will­ing vic­tims. In­tel­li­gence sug­gests some el­e­ment of the Asian pop­u­la­tion with­in T&T is ac­tive­ly in­volved in this prac­tice and col­lude with lo­cals and pos­si­bly Venezue­lan na­tion­als.”

Af­ter the dec­i­ma­tion of the ISIL ter­ror­ist group, SSA not­ed, “Un­doubt­ed­ly, with the high­est ex­port of FTFs in the west­ern hemi­sphere per capi­ta, Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pre­pare for this fall­out.”

“The ISIL phe­nom­e­na forced T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to ac­cept two re­al­i­ties—the first be­ing that with­in the ten per cent of Mus­lim be­liev­ers, there’s a de­gree of do­mes­tic rad­i­cal­ism which de­mands at­ten­tion; and that state ap­pa­ra­tus should pre­pare for pos­si­ble mass re­turn of for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­er and their off­spring over time.

“Glob­al trends in­di­cate some re­turnees would ei­ther find so­lace with­in crim­i­nal gangs or re­turn to sim­i­lar paths of rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion. In ei­ther event, this group presents sig­nif­i­cant threat that re­quires re­sources and a cor­re­spond­ing Whole-of-Gov­ern­ment ap­proach.”

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