Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Three crim­i­nol­o­gists yes­ter­day ex­pressed shock over a dis­turb­ing video of gang lead­ers dis­play­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed guns as they called on the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to hold a high-lev­el emer­gency meet­ing to work out a na­tion­al pol­i­cy on the pub­lic safe­ty threats from gangs, mur­ders and ter­ror­ism.

The call was made by Prof Ramesh De­osaran, Dar­ius Figueira and Ian Ramd­hanie hours af­ter the T&T Guardian pub­lished a front page ar­ti­cle, ti­tled "Ex­posed." The video, shared on What­sApp, iden­ti­fied Ras­ta City gang lead­ers from Beetham Gar­dens, Sea Lots, Mal­oney, Port-of-Spain, Mara­cas, Point Fortin and Ca­roni, among oth­er ar­eas, dis­play­ing a va­ri­ety of weapons, in­clud­ing Mac 10s, Uzis, Tec-9s, Ak47s and AR15 ri­fles.

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.

The video is now be­ing probed by the Crim­i­nal Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit (CGIU) and Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency, as they gath­er in­for­ma­tion on sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals.

Yes­ter­day, Figueira said what caught his at­ten­tion was the ar­se­nal the gang lead­ers had in their pos­ses­sion, in par­tic­u­lar the US-man­u­fac­tured AR15 ri­fle.

"That is not a com­mon weapon. You can­not ac­cess it as easy as AK 47," he said, adding T&T now has the high­est seizures of AR15 ri­fles in the gang chain af­ter Puer­to Ri­co.

"The ques­tion that aris­es is that we have a new net­work that is smug­gling these so­phis­ti­cat­ed as­sault ri­fles from the US in­to the Caribbean. This is not good news for us. We are un­der threat from this gun smug­gling ring. It's fright­en­ing."

Not­ing that the AR15 ri­fle had been used in the killing of gang leader Sel­wyn "Robo­cop" Alex­is, Figueira said that weapon was the pre­ferred choice of the Mex­i­can car­tel.

"When you can be­come linked to this net­work that is mov­ing weapon­ry and am­mu­ni­tion from the US to the Caribbean and you are hooked in­to it, where you can dis­play pic­tures of your­self and pow­er­ful guns, the im­puni­ty that you are en­joy­ing in jail is like a va­ca­tion."

He said the video sent a strong mes­sage to the Gov­ern­ment that that was the lev­el the gang mem­bers were will­ing to go.

"In the un­der­world the video is call­ing out the Gov­ern­ment," he added.

Figueira ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to join hands to fight the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, say­ing that while they were bick­er­ing, cit­i­zens were caught in the mid­dle of the cross­fire.

De­osaran re­peat­ed his ap­peal to the au­thor­i­ties to ex­am­ine how and why so many black youths per­sis­tent­ly drift­ed from the sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in­to se­ri­ous crimes and gang war­fare.

He added: "The re­gret­table de­lays and de­nials over this crim­ino­genic phe­nom­e­non are cre­at­ing hav­oc with pub­lic safe­ty, as well as cost­ly loss­es with­in our young gen­er­a­tion.

"I can do no more now than to en­cour­age the au­thor­i­ties not on­ly to en­force the law but to stop this trag­ic haem­or­rhage in our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem."

He said it was time for the coun­try's po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate to ad­dress se­ri­ous­ly the ar­eas of se­ri­ous crimes, ter­ror­ism and ed­u­ca­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly.

"In the present cir­cum­stances, a pub­lic in­ter­est im­per­a­tive now is for the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to hold a high-lev­el emer­gency meet­ing to work out a na­tion­al pol­i­cy con­sen­sus over the pub­lic safe­ty threats from gangs, mur­ders, ter­ror­ism and the re­quired in­sti­tu­tion­al re­spons­es re­quired," he added.

Say­ing the coun­try could not con­tin­ue along this path, De­osaran said the last time the for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning-led gov­ern­ment and the Bas­deo Pan­day-led Op­po­si­tion met on crime and law en­force­ment the re­sults did not work well.

"Let's hope there is now a high­er wis­dom from that ex­pe­ri­ence, es­pe­cial­ly since the pub­lic safe­ty chal­lenges have grown more se­ri­ous­ly.

"Look­ing for quick mag­ic or overnight so­lu­tions will not work. I well know the con­sti­tu­tion­al role of the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion but with the coun­try bleed­ing as it is now, there is still room for states­man­ship.

The re­put­ed video and its con­tents are just an­oth­er symp­tom of things yet to come," De­osaran warned.

Bot­tom­less pit

Prin­ci­pal of the Caribbean In­sti­tute for Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Safe­ty, Ian Ramd­hanie, said the num­ber of guns cir­cu­lat­ing in the coun­try was un­prece­dent­ed and wor­ry­ing.

He added: "Yes, the po­lice have been mak­ing raids and re­cov­er­ing firearms and am­mu­ni­tion but it seems that there is a bot­tom­less pit from which these guns are com­ing. The video is just a snip­pet, a mi­nus­cule idea of what re­al­ly ex­ists out there.

"We need an­swers as to how come these high-pow­ered weapons are so eas­i­ly avail­able, who pays for the guns and with what cur­ren­cy? Where does the mon­ey go? Which in­sti­tu­tions are in­volved?"

He ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to work in tan­dem to win the war on crime.

"But giv­en our ad­ver­sar­i­al na­ture of op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics, I will not be sur­prised if this doesn't hap­pen. The pres­sure must then come from civ­il so­ci­ety and vot­ers from all sides who want de­ci­sive ac­tion to deal with crime.

"We al­so need bad­ly the pro­vi­sion of ref­er­en­dum that can get na­tion­al con­sen­sus on what may be termed con­tro­ver­sial crime-fight­ing strate­gies like the death penal­ty," he added.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, Michael Seales, ad­mit­ted that while the po­lice have been seiz­ing a num­ber of guns, not many peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and charged. He said hold­ers of these il­le­gal guns have tremen­dous dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­quir­ing am­mu­ni­tion but the gun trade was just as thriv­ing as the drug trade.

"No longer are firearms be­ing re­tained for the pro­tec­tion of the drugs it­self... but it now has a firearm trade that is tak­ing place in the coun­try," he said.

Seales said videos of gang mem­bers that have gone vi­ral have helped the CGUI.

"It gives you enough in­for­ma­tion to ob­tain a search war­rant. I can say that the CGUI and Cy­ber Crime Unit have seen some mea­sure of suc­cess when a video goes vi­ral, you al­most af­ter a time see some mea­sure of re­sults," he said.