MARY K KING
We are being told daily that many of our murders are gang-related and that they are focused in the Laventille areas. Hence, we need more feet on the ground, we need to precept the army, to patrol this killing field.
What this approach suggests is that our gangs, besides the normal criminal activities to make money or in competition with each other in these activities, are fighting among themselves. We are seeing an increasing number of people before the courts walking free because witnesses contract amnesia or they are killed before testifying. It appears that besides the violence they may indeed be threatening the security of the state.
The view of the Government to date in their social solutions, exemplified by the Hoop of Life and providing playing fields, is that these gangs are violent youth groups that deal in petty crime, localised drugs–that these gangs are unsophisticated, uneducated and are largely interested in controlling swathes of decaying urban areas that mark out their territories. We hear of killings, allegedly because some victim crossed a borderline.
However, the recent literature is seeing the gang more as an organised crime group. Hence it is very important to understand how these gangs are organised and their funding resources.
The literature tells us that the policies of many governments besieged by gangs revolve around the power of law enforcement, in some cases, like in T&T, putting the military on the streets to fight the gangs. However, there are few references to the social policies in this fight and even when they are found they focus on the reasons why individuals join gangs or what sort of family conditions produce these at-risk youths.
In T&T, our studies suggest that single-family households and poverty are among the causes of gang formation. However, these studies focus on the causes of this gang culture and not the solutions apart from the inane–improving access to sporting facilities and the like.
More recent work on this gang culture takes a more holistic look at the problem and has begun to relate the activities of these gangs to cartels, organised crime and even terrorist groups. These studies tend to recommend as solutions, political-military enforcement approaches based on country insurgency methods.
Our current discussion in Parliament on the Defence (Amendment) Bill is a step in this direction. However, there is little discussion as to the evolution of these gangs into what could be a national security threat to our country. The question before us is whether our gangs are anywhere near the level of sophistication we see in Mexico and pose such a threat to us or if they are heading there?
Our gangs are well equipped with weapons, use them discriminately and they are of such sophistication that suggests that the gangs are institutionalised. There is not enough information to tell us whether these gangs are independent cells that operate subject to a larger country or regional leadership on drugs,or whatever.The island-wide radar and the now cancelled OPVs suggest that at one time the Government thought that our gangs were operating in collusion with a broader-based leadership, had broader-based goals.
This is also the view held by Darius Figueiro that all of the tools of the trade utilised in gangland come from the drug trade and gangs are the spawn of that trade; hence the largest single threat to Caribbean states is not the gangs but the drug trade–to deal with gangs the drug trade must be addressed.This is in keeping with the view expressed by MP Dr Amery Bowne in the Parliament on the current debate; that the PP Government should, instead, be addressing the drug problem of which the gangs are but symptoms.
An article by Kevin Edmonds says that in the US involvement in the Caribbean drug trade:
"It is impossible to argue against the protection of the Caribbean people against the ravages of the drug trade–concrete steps must be taken to combat it. However, the militarisation of the region should not be considered the only way to move forward. Preventative programmes to tackle youth crime and general unemployment must be instituted and supported by Caribbean governments and their international partners. Despite what the previously mentioned National Defence University thinks about the militarisation of the Caribbean, such actions are not preventative, but reactionary and ultimately futile. Like anywhere else, it is the overall lack of opportunity which creates foot soldiers for the drug trade. The determination to create a real alternative is what is needed–not the deployment of more drones or more special police task forces."
In the final analysis, the provision of better economic opportunities for the onshore sector via economic diversification is fundamental to the alleviation of the scourge of our gangland and with much more attention paid to all financially challenged single-parent homes.
