JENSEN La VENDE

Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Ju­ly start­ed off stormy as the coun­try, specif­i­cal­ly To­ba­go, braced for Hur­ri­cane Beryl.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) de­clared a state of emer­gency and braced for a ma­jor im­pact. The cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and its re­sources stood ready for any even­tu­al­i­ties.

How­ev­er, Beryl spared the is­land and in­stead un­leashed her fury as a Cat­e­go­ry 4 hur­ri­cane on the neigh­bour­ing is­lands of Grena­da and St Vin­cent.

Al­though spared the brunt of Beryl’s fierce winds and heavy rains, some com­mu­ni­ties suf­fered dam­age. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of­fered refuge to chil­dren from the af­fect­ed is­lands with rel­a­tives in this coun­try.

The coun­try was spared a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter but was plagued by a man-made one as 66 mur­ders were record­ed for the month. In the same pe­ri­od last year, there were 52 mur­ders.

Af­ter 15 peo­ple were mur­dered be­tween Ju­ly 12 and 14, the ex­ec­u­tive of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) an­nounced that of­fi­cers in all po­lice sta­tions across the coun­try were on high alert. Pris­ons were searched, road­blocks in­creased and there were “more boots on the ground.”

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Ju­ly 14, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­vealed that of the 14 mur­ders com­mit­ted at that time, sev­en were gang-re­lat­ed, three were drug-re­lat­ed, three were the re­sult of rob­beries, and the mo­tive for one was un­known.

Un­stop­pable blood­shed

Among the mur­der vic­tims in Ju­ly was Sco­tia­bank em­ploy­ee Giselle Crys­tal Pe­ters, 38 a moth­er of two who was stabbed in the neck by ban­dits on Ju­ly 27. She was killed at her Re­form Res­i­den­tial Phase II home which was un­der con­struc­tion.

A week ear­li­er, Shameia Went was beat­en to death af­ter leav­ing a safe house to rekin­dle her re­la­tion­ship with her abuser on Ju­ly 21. Her bat­tered and bruised body was dropped off at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she died a day lat­er.

Mass shoot­ings added sev­en bod­ies to the mur­der count. Gun­men mur­dered Coast Guard mem­ber Dave Lyons, 24, and Jah-Mar­ley God­dard, 23, both of Sea Trace, Diego Mar­tin, and Earl Pe­ters Jr, 33. The shoot­ing oc­curred out­side the Cunu­pia branch of Piz­za Boys and Rit­u­als on Ju­ly 14.

To­ba­go record­ed its first-ever quadru­ple mur­der on Ju­ly 18 when Anslem Dou­glas, Gre­go­ry Ham­let, Samuel Mc Cain and Jamo­ki Dun­can were fa­tal­ly shot while play­ing cards at Dou­glas’ home on Black Rock Main Road on Ju­ly 18.

Their mur­ders were the re­sult of an on­go­ing gang war in­volv­ing “sleep­er cells” of gangs based in Trinidad, po­lice said. Those killings took the is­land’s count for the year to 16.

Help need­ed

Tired of the killings and con­cerned about the ef­fect gun-tot­ing crim­i­nals were hav­ing on the econ­o­my, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty de­mand­ed more from the Gov­ern­ment. Their joint call for ac­tion came amidst wan­ing con­fi­dence in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

More than $50 bil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed to that Min­istry in ten years and the busi­ness cham­bers de­mand­ed three things: mea­sur­able re­duc­tions in crime on a month-to-month ba­sis; en­hanced po­lice pres­ence and faster re­sponse times and a com­pre­hen­sive se­cu­ri­ty plan de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with busi­ness lead­ers, law en­force­ment, and com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers.

In re­sponse, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley con­vened an ur­gent meet­ing with CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher, DCPs Ju­nior Ben­jamin, Natasha George, Suzette Mar­tin and the di­vi­sion­al heads of the TTPS. Al­so present were Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel, the then act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe and Di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency Brigadier Gen­er­al (Ret) An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Row­ley high­light­ed the need for a “more proac­tive, in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven, tar­get­ed and ro­bust ap­proach which is fo­cused on those who are known and sus­pect­ed to be in­volved in se­ri­ous crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

He al­so ex­pand­ed his Cab­i­net, adding Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land as Min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

Not­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Hinds might have had too much on his plate, Row­ley told a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing: “So much trou­ble is com­ing to us from the po­lice; as Prime Min­is­ter, it’s my pre­rog­a­tive to make that de­ci­sion, that the min­is­ter was be­ing dis­tract­ed by too many oth­er things when we want­ed more fo­cus­ing on the po­lice at this par­tic­u­lar point in time.”

He stressed that the de­ci­sion was not a knee-jerk re­ac­tion as he had been analysing the sit­u­a­tion for sev­er­al years and de­spite calls from the Op­po­si­tion, re­plac­ing Hinds was not a vi­able op­tion.

Uni­fied front against crime

The Op­po­si­tion of­fered their as­sis­tance to ad­dress crime with Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly call­ing for a uni­fied front. While main­tain­ing that leg­is­la­tion alone was not a panacea to crime, the UNC sur­prised the coun­try by sup­port­ing the Bail Amend­ment (2024) Bill.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the bill, said sup­port was giv­en “in the pub­lic in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T.”

In the Up­per House, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj said she was pained to sup­port the bill and called for more ef­fort from state agen­cies to in­crease con­vic­tions.

“The Po­lice Ser­vice has to un­der­stand what we are sac­ri­fic­ing to give them this and that we have ex­pec­ta­tions of them and their per­for­mance. The po­lice must al­so show how the bill al­lowed them to build cas­es against gangs and those ac­cused of se­ri­ous of­fences,” she said.

The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Test­ing and Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion) Bill was passed in the Sen­ate with sup­port from all sides. The leg­is­la­tion is aimed at weed­ing out cor­rupt li­cens­ing, po­lice and prison of­fi­cers, and pub­lic ser­vants em­ployed at the Board of In­land Rev­enue, Cus­toms and Ex­cise, and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, who are com­plic­it in crime.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty trou­bles

Tur­moil in the coun­try’s main in­tel­li­gence agency, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), which be­gan months ear­li­er when the then head Ma­jor Roger Best was re­placed by Phillips-Spencer, took an­oth­er turn with Row­ley’s rev­e­la­tions in Par­lia­ment about an al­leged plot to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment. He said an au­dit re­port in­to the SSA showed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion were un­ac­count­ed for. There were al­so re­ports of ques­tion­able hir­ing and train­ing prac­tices at the agency.

Row­ley said there was a “cult” with­in the SSA arm­ing them­selves while preach­ing a doc­trine about trained mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary per­son­nel “with a re­li­gious call­ing to be the most suit­able to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship.”

How­ev­er, de­spite these rev­e­la­tions, some of the 28 work­ers who had been fired from the were of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-ap­ply for their jobs. By the end of the month, there was no word on whether any of them had re-ap­plied or been re-hired.

From al­le­ga­tions of a cult, the fo­cus shift­ed to the oc­cult when some To­bag­o­ni­ans re­spond­ed to on­go­ing joint an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es on the is­land. One an­gry res­i­dent Har­ry Her­cules lit can­dles and placed red flow­ers around the skull of an an­i­mal and a video was cir­cu­lat­ed show­ing a group of men lift­ing a skull, be­lieved to be from a cow, in a sup­posed oc­cul­tic rit­u­al aimed at of­ficee from the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment.

Her­cules, a self-pro­fessed Obeah man, said peo­ple in To­ba­go East were ready to sum­mon their an­ces­tors to fight against the law­men.