Sascha?Wil­son

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen?Williams says a spe­cial unit has been set up to mon­i­tor gang ac­tiv­i­ty. Asked in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day to com­ment on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan's com­ment that the An­ti-Gang Act was in­tend­ed to have a psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect on gangs, the com­mis­sion­er said he did not want to com­ment on any­thing Ram­lo­gan or any oth­er min­is­ter had to say on crime and gangs in the coun­try. How­ev­er, he said: "What I can say is that the Po­lice Ser­vice has giv­en spe­cial fo­cus on gang ac­tiv­i­ty and we have a Crim­i­nal and Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit with a man­date to fo­cus on gang ac­tiv­i­ty." How­ev­er, Williams said he did not know off-hand whether there were any ar­rests un­der the?act since the state of emer­gency end­ed. Due to the spi­ralling mur­der rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly gang-re­lat­ed killings, the Gov­ern­ment passed the An­ti-Gang Act last year. It was pro­claimed in Au­gust 2011.?Days lat­er Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared a State of Emer­gency in an at­tempt to ar­rest the crime scourge.

Over 400 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and charged un­der the Act, but the Di­rec­tor of Pros­e­cu­tions dropped the charges against all, but one, due to lack of ev­i­dence. Asked to com­ment on Ram­lo­gan's state­ment that the po­lice were not do­ing enough to en­force the An­ti-Gang Act, Williams said: "Not the AG alone, I think every cit­i­zen in the coun­try will be say­ing that un­less there are ar­rests of hun­dreds and hun­dreds of per­sons in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty."

How­ev­er, he said their fo­cus re­mained on ad­dress­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try. Asked whether the po­lice were aware the act was in­tend­ed to tar­get gang's psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, he said: "The act speaks for it­self." He could not say whether there had been a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of gangs be­cause it was dif­fi­cult to say how many gangs ex­ist­ed. He said ac­cord­ing to the law, if a group of peo­ple en­gaged in crim­i­nal con­duct to­geth­er and re­peat sim­i­lar con­duct then they were a gang, adding: "You can­not re­al­ly fi­nalise any fixed num­ber of gangs."

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Wel­fare and So­cial Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion?Anand Rame­sar said a year was too soon to say whether the leg­is­la­tion had a psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect on gangs. Ram­lo­gan said in­tel­li­gence gath­ered sug­gest­ed the leg­is­la­tion had a de­ter­rent ef­fect on young peo­ple want­i­ng to join gangs and gang lead­ers want­i­ng to re­cruit young peo­ple. "Leg­is­la­tions al­ways have a psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact. It was not com­mu­ni­cat­ed to us that the act was sup­posed to have a psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact but we know it was in­tend­ed to de­ter. "An analy­sis will have to do done but a year is in­suf­fi­cient time to say whether it had a psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact," Rame­sar said. The mat­ter against Ja­son Ed­ward, the on­ly per­son be­fore the court charged with be­ing a mem­ber of gang, has start­ed in the?San?Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trate's Court. The next hear­ing is on Sep­tem­ber 6.