JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness­es, Vivek Char­ran, be­lieves a height­ened po­lice pres­ence is not enough to ad­dress the crime scourge in the coun­try.

Some 15 peo­ple were killed over the week­end.  Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials have since giv­en as­sur­ances that there will be a height­ened po­lice pres­ence to en­sure cit­i­zens’ safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

Vivek Char­ran says it is un­re­al­is­tic to ex­pect the po­lice to be every­where.

“I do not be­lieve the po­lice are om­nipo­tent and om­nipresent.  I can’t be­lieve they’re go­ing to be in front of every house in Trinidad and To­ba­go to pre­vent a home in­va­sion. I can’t be­lieve they’re go­ing to post­ed on every sin­gle cor­ner of Trinidad and To­ba­go to pre­vent a gang-re­lat­ed ex­e­cu­tion in pub­lic with guns blaz­ing. I think it’s a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for po­lice and gangs to square off in a crowd­ed place in the day,” ob­served the busi­ness lob­by spokesman.

He calls for a strate­gic ap­proach to tack­ling the gang prob­lem.

“What are the strate­gies and poli­cies for dis­man­tling the gangs? How are the po­lice ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing the fight against crime to the gangs?” he asked. 

“What the po­lice [are] do­ing to dis­man­tle the gangs is key,” Char­ran states, “but in dis­man­tling the gangs, we al­so have to un­der­stand that at the ba­sis of that is gang cul­ture.  And gang cul­ture has be­come so preva­lent in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Char­ran be­lieves that vi­o­lence has be­come in­ter­twined with the cul­ture of T&T and says a par­a­digm shift is re­quired.

“It is al­most like a re-pro­gram­ming of our cul­ture and our so­ci­ety from the bot­tom up in a sense in terms of the val­ues,” he points out.

“I feel now that el­e­ments of gang cul­ture and mu­sic are very much in­ter­twined,” Char­ran notes.

“When you look at the ef­fect that has on young peo­ple … We see now many so­cial me­dia videos of young men danc­ing with sub-ma­chine guns and au­to­mat­ic weapons to big tunes,” he said.  “You’re see­ing young peo­ple tak­ing snip­pets of [these videos] and re­post­ing [them] as their mood, as if to say, ‘This is some­thing cool’ and ‘This is some­thing ac­cept­able in our so­ci­ety’.”

“But this is not ac­cept­able in our so­ci­ety, and it nev­er should be,” Char­ran as­serts, “be­cause at the end of that video might be peo­ple go­ing out there to kill oth­er peo­ple, re­sult­ing in what hap­pened over the week­end.”

The busi­ness lob­by spokesman states cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that it is un­healthy for the av­er­age cit­i­zen to con­tin­ue liv­ing in fear in this coun­try.