The scenes on tele­vi­sion of crim­i­nals en masse go­ing to and ex­it­ing from an at­tempt to burn down a build­ing are in­di­ca­tions of an­oth­er stage be­ing reached in the at­tempt to es­tab­lish a state con­trolled by crim­i­nal gangs. If the strat­e­gy be­comes uni­ver­sal­ly suc­cess­ful, not on­ly will it be used in the fight amongst the gangs, it will be es­tab­lished as the method to be adopt­ed for at­tacks on house­holds, busi­ness es­tab­lish­ments, and all oth­er forms of pre­da­tion.

It has be­come the norm that for every an­ti-crime strat­e­gy that law en­force­ment in­sti­tu­tions ini­ti­ate, the ban­dits take a fresh hold on their vic­tims. And it does not stop at crime in so­ci­ety, it has al­ready ad­vanced against those who wit­ness a crime, the courts/judges, the pris­ons, and every law en­force­ment es­tab­lish­ment.

It is not a stretch to liken crim­i­nal ac­tions to those of the “King of the Jun­gle”, the Li­on, as he re­asserts his grip on a prey that is des­per­ate­ly at­tempt­ing to wrig­gle free from the sharp teeth and pow­er­ful jaws of the preda­tor, im­me­di­ate­ly to the as­sis­tance of the King is his en massed pride.

The mis­sion of the crim­i­nals as they gath­er them­selves in num­bers is to gain to­tal con­trol to sub­ju­gate the state to their wish­es.

Ev­i­dence of the emerg­ing strat­e­gy is the mass at­tacks on homes and else­where. The lone-at­tack­er mod­el is that of the past. The av­er­age fam­i­ly has lit­tle chance to with­stand the at­tacks of a gang of dozens of crim­i­nals armed with guns and an in­tent to con­quer. It is quite like­ly when the need aris­es, that mass at­tacks will be at­tempt­ed on po­lice sta­tions and oth­er seem­ing­ly im­preg­nable fortress­es, as they are be­ing al­ready done in oth­er coun­tries.

It is very en­cour­ag­ing that el­e­ments of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, in this in­stance, the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion, have joined Crime Stop­pers in the at­tempts to thwart the crim­i­nals.

 The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice must, in the cir­cum­stances, ad­vance its own meth­ods to pre­vent and pros­e­cute crime.

One area of in­ves­ti­ga­tion that the bankers can as­sist the po­lice with is the al­leged prac­tice of some bank em­ploy­ees pro­vid­ing in­side in­for­ma­tion to as­sist crim­i­nals in tar­get­ing peo­ple who have made large with­drawals.

In ad­di­tion to the al­leged vol­un­tary par­tic­i­pa­tion by bank work­ers in such crim­i­nal acts, the sus­pi­cion must be that in ad­di­tion to com­pli­ant crim­i­nals on the in­side, there may be those who are strong-armed in­to co­op­er­at­ing with the rob­bers for fear of their lives and those of their fam­i­lies. The man­age­ment of banks must in­ves­ti­gate such pos­si­ble col­lu­sion be­tween em­ploy­ees and crim­i­nals.

It is leg­end, the in­abil­i­ty of the Po­lice Ser­vice to ad­e­quate­ly pre­vent crime and the courts to proac­tive­ly pros­e­cute gang mem­bers. The re­al­i­sa­tion must, how­ev­er, im­pact us all that com­plete de­pen­dence on the po­lice to wipe crim­i­nal­i­ty from the face of T&T has not and will not get rid of this de­ceased por­tion of the State.

In the same way that the crim­i­nals are up­scal­ing, so too must the rest of so­ci­ety join to find ways and means to catch the crim­i­nals and smash their gangs. If we don’t, “Sweet T&T” will be­come hostage to crim­i­nals and with­out the ca­pac­i­ty to wrig­gle free from the jaws of the li­ons.