Dar­ren Ba­haw

A video de­pict­ing known gang lead­ers, some of whom are in cur­rent­ly in jail, is en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of Crim­i­nal Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit (CGIU) and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency – this coun­try's main sur­veil­lance unit, as they gath­er in­for­ma­tion on sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals.

Po­lice said last night that the video, which is be­ing shared on What­sApp, clear­ly iden­ti­fies Ras­ta City gang lead­ers from Beetham Gar­dens, Sea Lots, Mal­oney, L'eau Place in Port-of-Spain, Mara­cas, Point Fortin and Ca­roni, among oth­er ar­eas.

Po­lice said the video was used pri­mar­i­ly as a re­cruit­ing tool to lure new mem­bers by giv­ing the im­pres­sion of a glo­ri­fied life of crime.

In the video, gang mem­bers dis­play a host of high-tech guns from their ar­se­nal, in­clud­ing the Mach 10, Uzi, Tec-9, AK47 and AR15 ri­fles.

Gang war­fare be­tween the Ras­ta City gang and what po­lice have la­belled as the Mus­lim gang has claimed lives of scores of young men from ma­jor crime hot spots across the coun­try.

Homi­cide Bu­reau of­fi­cers said yes­ter­day the war was main­ly among young black men for con­trol of drug turfs, Gov­ern­ment con­tracts and the right to ex­tort mon­ey from le­git­i­mate busi­ness peo­ple in ex­change for pro­tec­tion.

Sta­tis­tics from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice have shown over the years that gang mur­ders ac­count­ed for the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple killed each year.

Be­tween 2008, when there was a record high of 550 mur­ders, and to date, close to 3,300 peo­ple have been mur­dered, with the de­tec­tion rate well be­low the ac­cept­ed stan­dard.

Po­lice ad­mit­ted they have stepped up pa­trols in known crime hot spots, iden­ti­fied in the video and have been car­ry­ing out sweep­ing raids with "var­ied suc­cess."

The ex­tor­tion rack­et has grown over the years, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cen­tral Trinidad, af­ter a wave of kid­nap­pings for ran­som be­tween 2002 and 2007 sparked fear and pan­ic among mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, po­lice said.

One of lat­est causal­i­ties in the on­go­ing war was Sel­wyn "Robo­cop" Alex­is, who po­lice said con­trolled the Cen­tral re­gion with the help of crooked cops.

Alex­is, 52, was shot dead one month ago out­side his En­ter­prise car wash and mi­ni mart. Kevin Es­cayg, of San Juan, and Es­cayg's four-year-old son were al­so shot in that in­ci­dent.

The boy alone sur­vived, while one of Alex­is' as­sailants, Thomas "Hamza" Sharpe, was al­so killed in the gun­fire.

Sus­pects un­der watch

The video at the be­gin­ning iden­ti­fies slain gang leader Mer­lin "Cud­joe" Al­lam­by, 40, as the gen­er­al of the Ras­ta City gang. Al­lam­by was shot dead in Ju­ly 2008 with two oth­er peo­ple dur­ing an am­bush in Aranguez, San Juan.

Un­like oth­er videos of a sim­i­lar na­ture, the men in the video made no at­tempt to con­ceal their iden­ti­ties.

Po­lice said the men in the video ap­peared to be pos­ing with au­then­tic as­sault weapons in known lo­ca­tions in Trinidad, while oth­er guns fea­tured in the two-minute, 12-sec­ond video were tak­en off the In­ter­net.

CGIU of­fi­cers said yes­ter­day the video first ap­peared last year and re­cent­ly resur­faced. Of­fi­cers said the peo­ple iden­ti­fied in the video by their alias­es are be­ing mon­i­tored and pro­files are be­ing built on them. They in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that the in­for­ma­tion be­ing com­piled was not suf­fi­cient to con­vict them for any crime.

A sound­track ac­com­pa­ny­ing the video de­scribes meth­ods of mur­der, in­clud­ing the dump­ing of bod­ies in Ca­roni. It al­so shows a de­cap­i­tat­ed corpse with what ap­pears to be bul­let wounds to the chest area. Po­lice could not im­me­di­ate­ly con­firm the au­then­tic­i­ty of the body.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, who was pro­vid­ed with a copy of the video yes­ter­day, said: "Ma­te­r­i­al of this na­ture is ob­vi­ous­ly cause for con­cern. It has been passed on­to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties for ver­i­fi­ca­tion/au­then­ti­ca­tion and any in­ves­ti­ga­tion that is deemed to be nec­es­sary."