At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi in­tends to meet with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith to ex­plore so­lu­tions af­ter a Spe­cial Branch re­port high­light­ed that state con­tracts were be­ing award­ed to crim­i­nal el­e­ments by two re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter ad­dress­ing a class at the Lok Jack School of Busi­ness yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi in­di­cat­ed that he was al­ready in dis­cus­sions with the com­mis­sion­er but would meet with him next week when he re­turns to the coun­try.

He ex­plained that while there was An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion which al­lowed po­lice to pros­e­cute gang mem­bers, they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing chal­lenges with gath­er­ing the ev­i­dence.

Though he is ex­cit­ed to work with the po­lice on a so­lu­tion, he em­pha­sised that it must be one root­ed in law.

“Be­cause the con­cept of black­list­ing or the con­cept of block­ing must be based up­on rea­son­able grounds and rea­son­able grounds must be based up­on ev­i­dence and ev­i­dence must be co­gent. There­fore, there is a gap be­tween idea and im­ple­men­ta­tion. We are work­ing on that so­lu­tion,” he said.

Al-Rawi was re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­tiga­tive re­port on Wednes­day which re­vealed that sev­en re­put­ed gang lead­ers in north Trinidad have ben­e­fit­ed from state con­tracts worth close to $6 mil­lion. The CoP has blamed this prac­tice for fu­elling gang wars which has con­tributed to an up­surge in homi­cides in the past 15 years.