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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Words are not enough

by

473 days ago
20240319

It is not an ex­ag­ger­a­tion to use the word mas­sacre to de­scribe the mur­ders of the five men gunned down at Harpe Place in east Port-of-Spain last week­end.

That hail of bul­lets dis­rupt­ed a Sat­ur­day morn­ing, tak­ing the lives of Rudolph James, Randy Graves, Sgt Lar­ry Phillip, Pe­te No­ray and De­von Jack at the end of a week that had more than its share of dis­turb­ing in­ci­dents.

The star­tling rev­e­la­tions in the on­go­ing Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency probe and the dis­cov­ery of Han­nah Mathu­ra’s skele­tal re­mains in a Val­sayn back­yard were al­ready too many dis­turb­ing in­ci­dents for one week when the Harpe Place shoot­ings hap­pened.

It was a jolt­ing re­minder that T&T’s many trou­bles in­clude gang ac­tiv­i­ty, with more than 100 crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es en­gag­ing in high lev­els of homi­cide and vi­o­lence, main­ly mur­ders.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as in the case of the oth­er mass shoot­ings that have been com­mit­ted in this coun­try, the re­sponse from lead­ers pro­vides no com­fort to the cit­i­zen­ry.

There was a voice note from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher de­plor­ing the vi­o­lence but of­fer­ing lit­tle to in­spire con­fi­dence from the pub­lic.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s at­tempt to as­sure cit­i­zens that state agen­cies “will not give up the fight to rid our streets and oth­er places of the evil that is now wide­spread” missed the mark.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds’ con­dem­na­tion of the in­ci­dent will not com­fort a pop­u­la­tion now numbed by the ease and fre­quen­cy with which gang­sters en­gage in bru­tal crim­i­nal acts.

Af­ter more than a decade marked by a rapid es­ca­la­tion in gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence, words are not enough, not when there are no signs of progress in at­tack­ing this so­cial plague.

While lead­ers and de­ci­sion-mak­ers make promis­es they have been un­able to keep and op­po­si­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tives crit­i­cise, more and more cit­i­zens are dy­ing.

The con­stant pub­lic lamen­ta­tions of enough is enough now ring hol­low.

At this crit­i­cal stage, noth­ing less than con­sis­tent and de­ci­sive ac­tion with mea­sur­able re­sults will do.

Gang ac­tiv­i­ty must be dealt with as an ur­gent pub­lic emer­gency, with task forces and oth­er bod­ies to in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute gang mem­bers op­er­at­ing con­cur­rent­ly with pre­ven­tion and in­ter­ven­tion mea­sures to dis­man­tle and dis­suade gang mem­ber­ship.

Ef­forts fo­cused on hotspots and crime boss­es must be sus­tained as part of mul­ti­fac­eted ef­forts to pre­vent or re­duce vi­o­lence.

Tak­ing ex­am­ples from oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, there has been suc­cess with an­ti-gang mea­sures, and ef­forts to pre­vent young peo­ple from join­ing gangs, through a range of ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing af­ter-school pre­ven­tion pro­grammes.

Long-term, proac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions of en­tire gangs have de­liv­ered much bet­ter re­sults than re­ac­tive, short-term in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions of in­di­vid­u­als.

In ad­di­tion to pros­e­cu­tors and the po­lice, oth­er pro­fes­sion­als, such as ed­u­ca­tors, cler­gy, health pro­fes­sion­als and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, should be en­gaged in long-term an­ti-gang in­ter­ven­tions.

The Harpe Place in­ci­dent—just the lat­est car­nage on or near a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) com­mu­ni­ty—ex­posed the ab­sence of even the most ba­sic mea­sures to de­ter crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in pub­lic hous­ing sites.

It is time for tougher mea­sures, some of which can be in­clud­ed in rental agree­ments, pro­hibit­ing the use, dis­play, or pos­ses­sion of firearms. It might make some dif­fer­ence if gang mem­bers, their fam­i­ly mem­bers and as­so­ciates risk evic­tion if caught us­ing or pos­sess­ing guns, or en­gag­ing in any of the crim­i­nal be­hav­iours as­so­ci­at­ed with gangs.

It is time to do some­thing, and try a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. No more of the talk which does not de­ter the gang­sters from their mur­der­ous ram­pages.


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