More than two years ago, the An­ti-Gang Act, 2018 was pro­claimed, mak­ing it an of­fence to be a mem­ber of a gang, to par­tic­i­pate in, or con­tribute to, the ac­tiv­i­ties of a gang, among oth­er re­lat­ed of­fences. Po­lice of­fi­cers can thus ar­rest, with­out a war­rant, any­one they have rea­son­able cause to be­lieve is a gang leader or mem­ber.

The ex­pec­ta­tion was that with the in­tro­duc­tion of tougher law, passed by a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment, there would be sup­pres­sion of the gang ac­tiv­i­ty that has been dri­ving high lev­els of vi­o­lence and mur­der in this coun­try. In­stead, the op­po­site seems to be the case, to the ex­tent that war­ring gangs have now en­tered in­to a truce and joined forces to de­clare war on law and or­der.

There have been very few ar­rests and even few­er con­vic­tions un­der the law and big play­ers in T&T's crim­i­nal un­der­world, func­tion­ing in plain view, have be­come more brazen in con­duct­ing their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Rather than be­ing forced in­to re­treat, they are at large to the ex­tent of main­tain­ing a strong so­cial me­dia pres­ence, flaunt­ing their il­lic­it high-pow­ered weapons, hordes of cash and lav­ish lifestyles.

In re­cent days there have been re­ports of uni­fied gangs mo­bil­is­ing to desta­bilise the coun­try. This alone should be set­ting off alarms through­out the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture, so it is per­plex­ing that no charges have been laid against any of these gang­sters plot­ting against T&T.

For close to two decades, ac­cord­ing to stud­ies by crim­i­nol­o­gists, these gangs have been in­creas­ing in size and reach, their ex­po­nen­tial growth fund­ed by mon­ey laun­der­ing and drug traf­fick­ing.

The small, frag­ment­ed groups that emerged from ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, gain­ing strength as they filled the vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the pover­ty and mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion in these ar­eas, were es­ti­mat­ed to num­ber 95 gangs with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,269 mem­bers about 14 years ago. Last year, con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mates put the crim­i­nal gang mem­bers at more than 2,500 di­vid­ed main­ly be­tween two war­ring en­ti­ties, Ras­ta City and Mus­lims.

Law-abid­ing cit­i­zens liv­ing un­der siege from these ruth­less rapists, killers and plun­der­ers are yet to ben­e­fit from any of the re­lief promised with the pas­sage of the An­ti Gang Act or any of the oth­er crime-fight­ing laws pushed through the two Hous­es of Par­lia­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

The re­cent truce be­tween Ras­ta City and Mus­lims will not bring a let-up to the blood­shed and the crim­i­nals have is­sued threats to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice mem­bers which are yet to be met with any le­gal re­sponse.

There were sig­nif­i­cant blun­ders made un­der the pre­de­ces­sor to the ex­ist­ing law when, dur­ing the state of emer­gency in 2011, sev­er­al gang mem­bers were ar­rest­ed and charged, then re­leased. To add in­sult to that in­jury, the state was forced to pay them large sums of mon­ey for wrong­ful ar­rest.

By now, with the avail­able leg­isla­tive pow­er, these crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es should have been in­fil­trat­ed, ar­rests made and charges laid.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and AG Al-Rawi need to ex­plain why that hasn't hap­pened.