Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Times have changed since the at­tempt­ed coup of Ju­ly 1990. Those who wish to desta­bilise so­ci­ety and car­ry out il­le­gal acts have de­vel­oped new ways of do­ing it and so law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties must be pre­pared for the new world of ter­ror­ism and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

This was the view of sev­er­al ex­perts who com­ment­ed on in­creas­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty across the coun­try.

The bloody ram­page in T&T con­tin­ues as 2021 winds down. Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), be­tween Jan­u­ary and Sep­tem­ber, there were 287 mur­ders. The re­port­ed mur­der to­tal for 2020 was 393.

Giv­en the eco­nom­ic and so­cial prob­lems in this coun­try, is the coun­try at risk of an­oth­er 1990?

Ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Renée Cum­mings, T&T should be pre­pared for any sit­u­a­tion and can’t af­ford to be caught off guard.

A grad­u­ate of John Jay Col­lege of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice, in New York, Cum­mings is a crim­i­nal psy­chol­o­gist who spe­cialis­es in ter­ror­ism stud­ies and the psy­cho­dy­nam­ics of ter­ror­ism. She is al­so an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) strate­gist, ethi­cist, and da­ta ac­tivist.

“If you are look­ing for the same reper­toire then you are look­ing for trou­ble,” she warned.

“Chances are, it won’t look like 1990 again, so if you are look­ing for that method­ol­o­gy you might get an­oth­er sur­prise. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, ter­ror­ism is not a stag­nant threat. Giv­en the ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy, the in­ter­net, so­cial me­dia, new and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as AI, be pre­pared for and to de­fend against mul­ti­ple threats or at­tacks at one time.”

Not­ing that crim­i­nals have changed the way they car­ry out their ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, Cum­mings ad­vised: “AI can be used to en­hance the in­ten­si­ty of a ter­ror­ist at­tack or to am­pli­fy the po­ten­tial of groups with griev­ances—le­git­i­mate or per­ceived griev­ances—or dis­rup­tive el­e­ments to dis­sem­i­nate ex­trem­ist pro­pa­gan­da and spread dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns across so­cial me­dia. That could in­cite vi­o­lence on the streets. Thir­ty-one years ago was a very long time, the world is not the same.”

On the is­sue of whether T&T’s in­sti­tu­tions have done enough to pre­pare for a po­ten­tial ter­ror­ist at­tack or oth­er un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, Cum­mings asked: “Can our se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies in­voke a col­lec­tive de­fence in re­al-time? What crim­i­no­log­i­cal mod­els have they been us­ing to de­sign a re­sponse? How have they been gath­er­ing da­ta? What are an­a­lysts look­ing for?

“As in­con­ve­nient as it might be a road­block is rather a low lev­el when com­pared to rad­i­cal el­e­ments go­ing dark and deep in­side the dark web where they can com­mu­ni­cate more quick­ly, cov­er­ing ex­pand­ing dis­tances, and con­spire through en­crypt­ed ap­pli­ca­tions, avoid­ing de­tec­tion, as they rad­i­cal­ize, re­cruit, raise funds, make tu­to­ri­als avail­able and buy and trans­fer weapons. You don’t want to be caught off guard by in­no­v­a­tive ter­ror­ist am­bi­tions and oth­er ma­li­cious ac­tors.”

She ac­knowl­edged that crim­i­nals could use the lead­er­ship void in the TTPS to raise the lev­els of their at­tacks.

“Giv­en the abysmal de­tec­tion rate in Trinidad and To­ba­go over the last 15 or more years and the con­sis­tent­ly high homi­cide rates, it would be safe to say that those with crim­i­nal in­tent are cer­tain they could get away with crime. What we need to fo­cus on would be de­clin­ing trust in our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions, if there are suf­fi­cient out­lets for cit­i­zens to voice their con­cerns and be con­fi­dent that they will be heard.

“The TTPS and all de­fence agen­cies al­so need to up­grade their play­book, de­sign a dig­i­tal re­sponse, pro­cure ex­pe­ri­enced and di­verse tal­ent, em­brace crit­i­cal and in­no­v­a­tive think­ing.”

New tech­nol­o­gy, new threats

Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran who wrote a book on the 1990 Mus­limeen in­sur­rec­tion, A So­ci­ety Un­der Siege: A Study of po­lit­i­cal Con­fu­sion and Le­gal Mys­ti­cism, said a 1990 sce­nario with masked, gun-tot­ing mil­i­tants storm­ing the Par­lia­ment would be un­like­ly to­day. How­ev­er, there are oth­er dan­gers the na­tion should be pre­pared for.

“The in­creased num­ber of po­lice guards and se­cu­ri­ty now present around will be bet­ter alert­ed than they were in 1990. Giv­en the tech­nol­o­gy and re­mote sys­tems avail­able there is, how­ev­er, a dif­fer­ent, sin­is­ter dan­ger against which the au­thor­i­ties should be alert. That is the pos­si­ble, clan­des­tine plant­i­ng of lethal bombs with­in the premis­es of Par­lia­ment or around oth­er gov­ern­ment build­ings. This calls for so­phis­ti­cat­ed se­cu­ri­ty and vig­i­lance for pre­ven­tion, sur­veil­lance, and tac­ti­cal re­straint,” he said.

“Such an at­tack might not be dead­ly shoot­ings but to cre­ate fear and un­rest by in­di­vid­u­als or groups with po­lit­i­cal griev­ances, or per­sons who feel they have been vic­tims of one kind of so­cial in­jus­tice or an­oth­er. But who is there now like Abu Bakr to bold­ly walk in a tele­vi­sion sta­tion with a few men and guns, chal­lenge the army and boast that he is not afraid to die?”

De­osaran said the au­thor­i­ties must come up with ways to stem the in­flow of guns and drugs across T&T’s bor­ders if they want to see a re­duc­tion in crime. He al­so warned that the po­lit­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment must solve the coun­try’s deep­en­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic prob­lems.

“The need for ear­ly and ef­fec­tive man­age­ment of pop­u­lar dis­en­chant­ment such as road break-downs, un­bear­able wa­ter short­ages, po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, run­away cost-of-liv­ing prices, non-re­spon­sive­ness from gov­ern­ment agen­cies, etc. The au­thor­i­ties should be alert­ed that as such pop­u­lar dis­en­chant­ment grows, it can be cap­tured and ex­ploit­ed by charis­mat­ic lead­er­ship and turned in­to a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat. There were no so­cial me­dia in 1990 but there is to­day which makes the plan­ning and clan­des­tine ex­e­cu­tion of threats and bombs eas­i­er and more per­va­sive,” De­osaran. said

He added: “Al­liances might be formed with the in­creas­ing num­ber of sec­u­lar gangs, dozens of which are now well-or­ga­nized and scat­tered across the coun­try and which are threats for vi­o­lence, il­le­gal drugs, mur­ders, kid­nap­ping, and hu­man traf­fick­ing. If the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies can­not re­duce or con­trol such gang al­liances, it will be dif­fi­cult for them to thwart or ar­rest re­al or po­ten­tial ter­ror­ists.”

Ac­cord­ing to De­osaran, al­though there is no Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice at the mo­ment, the TTPS is a pro­fes­sion­al body that can han­dle any sit­u­a­tion.

“As a para­mil­i­tary, struc­tured or­gan­i­sa­tion, the po­lice ser­vice, even with­out a sub­stan­tive com­mis­sion­er, is still ca­pa­ble of deal­ing with crime. There are sev­er­al ranks with spe­cif­ic du­ties, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and these of­fi­cers, un­der se­nior su­per­vi­sion, must be able to rise to the oc­ca­sion.”

Con­tin­ues on page 7

No rev­o­lu­tion on the hori­zon

So­cial ac­tivist Mar­tin Alexan­der does not be­lieve T&T will see an­oth­er rev­o­lu­tion or coup any­time soon.

Alexan­der, who was in­volved in stu­dent protests dur­ing the 1970 Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion, said: “In 1970 there was mas­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion of per­sons in the dis­sat­is­fac­tion of the state of de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try as a new­ly in­de­pen­dent na­tion. In 1990, there were a se­ries of in­ci­dents be­tween the Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen and the state over this par­cel of land which end­ed up in the 1990 in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, you don’t have any such sit­u­a­tions ob­tain­ing right now. There is no one par­tic­u­lar group ba­si­cal­ly at each oth­er’s throat.”

He said the so­cial un­rest in Port-of-Spain last year was small com­pared to pre­vi­ous in­ci­dents.

“Crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties would be de­ter­mined by things that are hap­pen­ing with­in their area, de­pend­ing on if there is a void and an­oth­er group is weak­er and they can move against that group. Al­so, it’s al­so about the avail­abil­i­ty of drugs. Re­mem­ber, the weed that used to come from St Vin­cent is no longer there. All the weed burned down with Soufrière. There they used to plant the weed,” Alexan­der said

He warned that so­cial con­di­tions in the coun­try are de­te­ri­o­rat­ing and called on the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic es­tab­lish­ments to look out for T&T’s best in­ter­est.

“This is not just about COVID. These are prob­lems that we have had since In­de­pen­dence. Noth­ing changed since colo­nial­ism. We have had gov­ern­ments with no vi­sion,” he said.