Ke­jan Haynes

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day launched the Gang Re­duc­tion and Com­mu­ni­ty Project (GRACE) in an ef­fort to re­duce crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said the ini­tia­tive works through strength­ened in­tel­li­gence-led in­ves­ti­ga­tions and in­ter­ven­tions to re­duce the con­di­tions which re­sult in the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gangs.

Dur­ing the launch at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my in St James, Ja­cob ac­knowl­edged the mur­der toll, which has now crossed 400, and promised the new pro­gramme doesn’t mean the po­lice will now be “soft­er” on gangs. In­stead, he called it the “ide­al ap­proach to polic­ing.”

He said while the TTPS builds ca­pac­i­ty to “rig­or­ous­ly ar­rest the hard­ened gang lead­ers” and gang mem­bers, the TTPS must con­tin­ue to pre­vent young peo­ple from join­ing gangs in the first place.

“I think that the fig­ures should in­di­cate more and more why we need the sup­port, and why we need pro­grammes like the GRACE pro­gramme, that we can go and work in the com­mu­ni­ties and make the nec­es­sary change,” he said.

Ja­cob said the train­ing will be­gin with a se­lect group of of­fi­cers. From there, some of these of­fi­cers will be se­lect­ed to lead the project in the se­lect­ed com­mu­ni­ties and then it will be fol­lowed by the train­ing of over 600 of­fi­cers in the 12 sta­tion dis­tricts.

“The ev­i­dence-based process will be en­hanced by part­ner­ing with the UWI re­search group, not re­source group, to as­sist in da­ta col­lec­tion, mea­sure­ments and eval­u­a­tion on the com­ple­tion of this pro­gramme, it should be able to be repli­cat­ed in oth­er chal­lenged com­mu­ni­ties through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Ja­cob not­ed that in 2020 the TTPS record­ed 205 re­port­ed mur­ders that were clas­si­fied as gang /re­venge-re­lat­ed mur­ders. He said they seized 445 firearms and 63 of them were high-pow­ered weapons.