The po­lice raids on Thurs­day which re­sult­ed in the ar­rests of 15 mem­bers of three ma­jor gangs, in­clud­ing the re­put­ed leader of the Sixx gang, can’t be count­ed as a vic­to­ry, not even a small one.

Those ar­rests, in re­sponse to the re­cent up­surge in shoot­ings in Bel­mont and St Ann’s, rep­re­sent on­ly a sin­gle, tiny in­cur­sion in­to T&T’s deeply en­trenched crim­i­nal gang cul­ture, just scratch­ing the sur­face of the un­der­world ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place in al­most every part of the coun­try.

Of course, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is putting the best pos­si­ble spin on this de­vel­op­ment, de­scrib­ing the op­er­a­tion as a “gang sweep” in and around Port-of-Spain.

A se­nior of­fi­cer, who spoke off the record, said the raids had “been in the works for quite some time but it takes time to gath­er in­tel­li­gence and in­for­ma­tion.”

The uniden­ti­fied of­fi­cer fur­ther claimed, “We are do­ing some­thing to stop this blood­shed and it is in­tend­ed to be a mes­sage to the gangs that they are not in con­trol. We, the po­lice, are still very much in con­trol.”

Whether or not the TTPS in­deed has gained the up­per hand in this bat­tle against crim­i­nal gangs is de­bat­able.

Tak­ing 15 gang­sters in­to cus­tody is just the first step. The big­ger chal­lenge will be lay­ing of charges and se­cur­ing con­vic­tions — de­liv­er­ing the kind of mea­sur­able re­sults that are few and far be­tween in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Even more crit­i­cal is whether this hand­ful of ar­rests will re­sult in a de-es­ca­la­tion of the gang killings and al­most dai­ly re­ports of dri­ve-by shoot­ings, mul­ti­ple killings and ex­e­cu­tions of crim­i­nal ri­vals.

Still, ku­dos should be ex­tend­ed to the TTPS for mak­ing a small bit of progress in ef­forts to break the stran­gle­hold of gangs in com­mu­ni­ties in the cap­i­tal. While nowhere near the sig­nif­i­cant in­roads promised by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, it is a small step in the right di­rec­tion.

The chal­lenge now is to build on that mo­men­tum with fur­ther tar­get­ed raids to dis­man­tle gang in­fra­struc­ture.

It is like­ly to be a Her­culean up­hill strug­gle, since gangs seem to have dug their ten­ta­cles in­to some sec­tions of the TTPS. How else can one ex­plain the mur­der of 28-year-old Kevon “Bum­bles” Moses out­side the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day, when the killers were on spot to ex­e­cute him as he was re­leased and stepped out the sta­tion.

Deal­ing with that and oth­er bru­tal gang-re­lat­ed killings, in ad­di­tion to in­ter­cept­ing the steady flow of guns and drugs that fu­el their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, not to men­tion cut­ting off their con­nec­tions to transna­tion­al crime en­ter­pris­es, de­mands much more than a few ex­er­cis­es and some ar­rests.

And to date, CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her team have not demon­strat­ed they are bring­ing the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol.

There are now about 140 gangs op­er­at­ing through­out the coun­try and, just as had been fore­cast in the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency’s (SSA) 2021 se­cu­ri­ty re­port, there has been a new crime wave fol­low­ing the emer­gence of new­er, more volatile gangs.

So now, in ad­di­tion to the larg­er Ras­ta City and Mus­lim gangs, small crime groups — Tyson, EBG (Every­body Gets It), SIXX, Sev­en, Boom­bay Gang and Po­lice — are on a bloody ram­page across the coun­try.

It is a sit­u­a­tion that needs to be brought un­der con­trol swift­ly, as the mur­der count, cur­rent­ly at 508, looks set to race past last year’s bloody record.