To­ba­go po­lice are grap­pling with gang ac­tiv­i­ty, as crim­i­nals are now tak­ing their in­ter­ac­tion to so­cial me­dia such as Face­book and Zoom.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on Mon­day, head of the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion, ACP Col­lis Hazel, told Guardian Me­dia that while the po­lice re­lied on phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance and in­for­mants, gangs have been us­ing on­line com­mu­ni­ca­tion to evade tra­di­tion­al polic­ing meth­ods.

“They are com­ing up with dif­fer­ent strate­gies of com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Long time, you would have seen peo­ple us­ing walkie talkie and we have had peo­ple do­ing that as well. Now, we are see­ing dif­fer­ent de­vices, whether it be Zoom, Face­book, and What­sApp. Some of these gangs that are op­er­at­ing have now gone vir­tu­al.”

He said gang mem­bers have been lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to call shots and get peo­ple to com­mit il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties. Col­lis said no longer “can you go here and see a group of peo­ple from Ras­ta City gang, or Mus­lim”.

“There­fore, we have to be able to al­ways be ever ac­tive and to be up to date in terms of what is tak­ing place as a trend, so that we can be able to re­spond to is­sues of this na­ture.”

Hazel said To­ba­go po­lice will al­so be fol­low­ing suit and us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to track the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“The IT would help us in treat­ing with that be­cause that calls for a pro­fes­sion­al na­ture like any­thing else, hard tar­get­ing. Peo­ple are com­ing up with dif­fer­ent strate­gies.”

He said one of the mo­tives for mur­ders in To­ba­go has been re­venge. Some of them are com­ing out of hits from be­hind the prison walls, where the peo­ple are com­mu­ni­cat­ing with per­sons in prison and send­ing out these hits out­side that are gang-re­lat­ed.

In 2020, for­mer ACP for To­ba­go William Nurse said To­ba­go had 20 gangs. He had said that about 70 per cent of To­ba­go’s most no­to­ri­ous crim­i­nals and gang mem­bers lived in Gold­en Lane, Les Coteaux.

But on Mon­day, Hazel said To­ba­go gangs have evolved and the po­lice can­not say if there has been an in­crease in gangs or mem­bers.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed by a well-placed po­lice source that there have been dis­cus­sions on the es­tab­lish­ment of a gang unit on the is­land soon.

Mean­while, Hazel said there was an in­crease in mur­ders, break-ins, fraud and mo­tor ve­hi­cle lar­ce­ny.

He said in 2022, po­lice re­cov­ered 19 firearms in To­ba­go. So far for 2023, they have re­cov­ered 24 firearms. For 2023, the is­land has al­so record­ed nine mur­ders, while in 2022 there were ten mur­ders.