Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Two women are among nine al­leged gang­sters who were or­dered to be de­tained by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds on Thurs­day.

The women, Karisa Ram­paul and Lystra Dick, along with five men, Shaquille Pin­der, Naph­tal­ie Bona­parte, Joshua Mona, Jer­rel, Ba­boolal, and Ker­ry Gra­ham are sus­pect­ed of be­ing mem­bers of a gang plot­ting to mur­der prison of­fi­cers at the be­hest of an in­car­cer­at­ed gang leader.

Al­so de­tained is an al­leged en­forcer for the Ras­ta City gang, which is al­so called Sev­en.

The de­ten­tion or­der said, “The de­tainee, Mal­com By­er al­so called “Rashy Back”, has been cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied as a high-rank­ing en­forcer of a crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion known as the Ras­ta City/7 gang, car­ry­ing out home in­va­sions, ex­tor­tion of per­sons, and mur­der in­volv­ing the use of high pow­ered firearms in pub­lic places, and who in­tends to en­gage in vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ty in­clud­ing the mur­der of gang af­fil­i­ates and ri­val gang mem­bers.”

The fi­nal de­tainee, Ne­hemi­ah Joseph, is al­leged to be a mem­ber of the Re­sis­tance gang op­er­at­ing with­in Tu­na­puna and sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Joseph is sus­pect­ed of be­ing in­volved in “vi­o­lent gun re­lat­ed crimes in­clud­ing mur­der, armed rob­bery and firearms traf­fick­ing, and has been cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied as a per­son in­tend­ing, and with the means, to kill those be­lieved to be as­sist­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to his il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties in­volv­ing il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.”

The de­ten­tion or­ders for the nine is the largest de­ten­tion or­der is­sued since the State of Emer­gency be­gan on De­cem­ber 30, last year.

To date there are 15 peo­ple on de­ten­tion or­ders at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, San­ta Rosa.

Two weeks ago, Jonathan “Frog­gy” Bushell and Ezekiel “Easy” Mor­ris al­leged mem­bers of the Sixx gang were de­tained to pre­vent re­tal­ia­to­ry gun vi­o­lence, while Kevon Bocage was de­tained for be­ing a sup­posed gun and drug traf­fick­er.

Al­so de­tained are Shum­ba James, Calvin Lee and Joshua Roberts.

James was held af­ter po­lice pre­sent­ed in­for­ma­tion to Hinds of his sup­posed in­volve­ment in a plot to mur­der state wit­ness­es.

Lee, is the al­leged leader of the Sixx gang, while Roberts was de­tained be­cause he was al­leged­ly re­cruit­ed to at­tack prison of­fi­cers.

Lead­ing up to the De­cem­ber 30 de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), po­lice in­formed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil that fol­low­ing an at­tempt to kill Lee out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, there were warn­ings about reprisal gun at­tacks.

Dur­ing the at­tack on Lee, one man was killed and a day lat­er, five men were mur­dered in a reprisal at­tack. Po­lice said there were con­cerns about in­creased vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ties as a re­sult trig­ger­ing the State to de­clare an SoE.

En­ter­tain­er charged with pro­fess­ing to be gang mem­ber

A Trini­bad artiste has been charged with pro­fess­ing to be a gang mem­ber in or­der to pro­mote a gang.

The TTPS, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, said Yasheen Alexan­der, al­so known as Young Star 6ixx, a 23-year-old mu­si­cian/en­ter­tain­er of La Brea, was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 29, 2025, dur­ing on­go­ing State of Emer­gency op­er­a­tions.

The state­ment said of­fi­cers of the South West­ern Di­vi­sion Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit con­duct­ed ex­ten­sive in­quiries in­to gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties in the area. It said as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, sev­er­al video clips were ob­tained and analysed by the Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit, lead­ing to fur­ther in­quiries.

Af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers met with Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions South, Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal, on Feb­ru­ary 6, ad­vice was giv­en to charge Alexan­der with the of­fence.

The TTPS said it re­mains com­mit­ted to dis­man­tling gang net­works and en­sur­ing that in­di­vid­u­als who en­gage in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing the pro­mo­tion of gang cul­ture, are brought to jus­tice.