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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Griffith plans war against gangsters

by

20140429

"We don't ne­go­ti­ate with crim­i­nals." This was the state­ment made yes­ter­day by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith as he plans to wage war against gangs lead­ers and oth­er crim­i­nal el­e­ments.He was speak­ing in the wake of re­cent shoot­ings by gang mem­bers against law en­force­ment of­fi­cers in the past month.Last week Sat­ur­day, gun­men opened fire on of­fi­cers who were parked at the side of a road in John John, Laven­tille, which in­jured three peo­ple, in­clud­ing an eight-year-old boy.The day be­fore that of­fi­cers were sub­ject­ed to rapid gun­fire by gun­men at Bev­er­ly Hills, Laven­tille.

In a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said when of­fi­cers de­fend­ed them­selves, mem­bers of the pub­lic protest­ed against it."What hap­pens is when the of­fi­cers re­tal­i­ate it is the same in­di­vid­u­als who as­so­ciate with them (crim­i­nals) jump up and de­fend them. They are not help­ing so­ci­ety, they are leech­es and par­a­sites."If they want to fight, they pick the wrong one. The law en­force­ment agen­cies need to fight back and let them know their place," he said.Grif­fith said he had no plans for T&T to end up like Ja­maica where gang mem­bers con­trolled com­mu­ni­ties.

He added: "T&T would not end up like Ja­maica where cer­tain gangs took con­trol of com­mu­ni­ties and called it their turf."They don't own that and if they want turf let them pay for it and it is not through the bar­rel of a gang. This would not be a place where in com­mu­ni­ties no one has ac­cess to it."I am not talk­ing the talk. I am de­mand­ing that no crim­i­nal el­e­ments in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty should get con­tracts from the State in any way."The rea­son is the prin­ci­ples of war. You don't fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port them and pay for their drugs and their gang mem­bers.

"How can we now ask law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to take care of the en­e­my. My con­cept is to cut their fi­nan­cial sup­ply which feeds their sup­port base."We don't ne­go­ti­ate with crim­i­nals and I need sup­port from mem­bers of the pub­lic for ev­i­dence for suc­cess­ful ar­rests," he said.Crime had been re­duced by 38 per cent and homi­cides by 25 per cent, he said."I can cut it to 60 per cent. A hand­ful of fig­ures are ma­nip­u­lat­ing the younger ones and they are the big fish. I am call­ing on the pub­lic to as­sist. They want fight... they will get one," he said.Grif­fith said his min­istry was form­ing a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial op­er­a­tion group of high­ly trained task force of­fi­cers to deal with crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, ter­ror­ism, ex­plo­sives and gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.


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