Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

In­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing units of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) have height­ened their mon­i­tor­ing of a no­to­ri­ous gang in the coun­try af­ter dis­cov­er­ing voice notes be­tween a promi­nent mem­ber of that gang and an­oth­er gang­ster via What­sApp that can lead to po­ten­tial vi­o­lence.

The gang is in­tent on form­ing a "moth­er gang", which will en­com­pass mem­bers from re­spec­tive gangs op­er­at­ing as one.

"The gang's in­ten­tion is to try and unite that par­tic­u­lar gang un­der one lead­er­ship and fight against oth­er com­mon en­e­mies and pos­si­bly even the State," one of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors said.

In one of the first voice notes that this re­porter lis­tened to, one of the gang mem­bers spoke about a meet­ing that sev­er­al gang­sters at­tend­ed.

 "The in­ten­tion of the meet­ing was to try and get splin­tered fac­tions that broke away from the gang to re­unite and come to­geth­er as one again. But this is not sit­ting well with some mem­bers, and the voice notes paint a pic­ture of not on­ly some of the mur­der­ous ac­tiv­i­ties of the gang mem­bers, but if they are not go­ing to re­join the gang, then they will be an­ni­hi­lat­ed."

An­oth­er source added, "They are los­ing strength, and it's about reel­ing back in peo­ple to es­tab­lish strength even if it's by vi­o­lence..."

The in­tel­li­gence sources con­firmed that a sus­pend­ed po­lice of­fi­cer is al­leged­ly in­volved. The of­fi­cer, they said, worked for an elite unit of the TTPS and has been on their radar for some time af­ter they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from sev­er­al in­for­mants.

In­for­ma­tion from the prison and the un­der­world cir­cles sug­gest that "they are seek­ing to iden­ti­fy the gang with some form of a flag."

With the coun­try's mur­der rate al­ready at an all-time high and ap­proach­ing 600, in­tel­li­gence sources said they are do­ing every­thing they can to thwart what they call "a po­ten­tial­ly vi­o­lent up­heaval."

A re­port about the gang's in­ten­tions was pre­pared by one of the units and sub­mit­ted to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Yes­ter­day, re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the voice notes, act­ing CoP Er­la Christo­pher said the TTPS' in­tel­li­gence ap­pa­ra­tus was in­ves­ti­gat­ing these voice notes and "all due dili­gence will be con­duct­ed en­sur­ing all se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems are in place to man­age/in­ter­rupt any po­ten­tial vi­o­lence."

She said that the TTPS "con­tin­ues to re­lent­less­ly pur­sue the dis­man­tling of crim­i­nal gangs" in the coun­try. "Through the use of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and analy­sis, this has re­sult­ed in many ar­rests and these are dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties," she added.

Criminologist Dr Malisa Neptune-Figaro

On Fri­day the TTPS launched its Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion's Christ­mas 2022 an­ti-crime plan, "Op­er­a­tion Dare" at the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, and ACP North West Col­lis Hazel warned that it was not a time for any­one think­ing of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty to en­ter PoS. The of­fi­cers plan to main­tain a 24/7 lev­el of vis­i­bil­i­ty in the city.

The voice notes

There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 139 gangs in this coun­try, with at least sev­en main gangs, ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo. Most of them op­er­ate along the East-West cor­ri­dor while a few oth­ers with small num­bers are in cen­tral and south Trinidad, Nep­tune-Fi­garo said.

In one of the voice notes, the gang mem­ber, who is well known to po­lice and in the un­der­world, al­lud­ed to a fac­tion that will cer­tain­ly not agree to this union un­der one leader.

"It have (sic) men against it too, you know, and who eh re­spond like (name called) as far as I hear...he must be ob­serv­ing. Then they have the team who rid­ing with M...that whole team against, straight down nah boy, them not on that at all."

The gang mem­ber paints a grim pic­ture of this gang's mur­der­ous ac­tiv­i­ties as they op­er­ate with im­mu­ni­ty.

"M...team kill re­al broth­ers and strike at re­al men and clear his path­way to con­trol the grounds. He (M) kill out a gang leader (name called) whole team. They give him (the gang leader) a lock­down in jail for three-four months, and they wipe out his whole team out­side, about 20-some­thing youths they kill.

"They kill H in front of the sta­tion in Freeport. They kill Rod­ney and Boom, and they lick down Frank, Tin-O, and Trap. The last kill they kill was (name called) son in the car. And they strike at (name called) and have him run­ning out of the coun­try.

"They are heavy, he has a sys­tem man he rides with. His right-hand man called (name called of a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer). They are per­son­al child­hood friends. That is the man who he does his sys­tem mis­chief with, and he got sus­pend­ed some time ago."

In one of the voice notes, the gang mem­ber tells of the demise of An­ton "Boom­bie" Boney who was shot dead on the Uri­ah But­ler High­way near the Ca­roni fly­over in Sep­tem­ber last year. "You know Boom was not giv­ing in to any­body. Sponge­Bob and (name called)...cut their flick and mash in Boom. They hit him with a sys­tem rock, and (name called) bite him on the high­way. Sponge­Bob is in charge."

En­rique "Sponge­Bob" Gill and En­rique Men­doza were both shot dead along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way near Tarou­ba af­ter leav­ing the Stink and Dut­ty fete at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um. Gun­men opened fire on the car killing both men and in­jur­ing a third on June 20, this year.

The gang mem­ber is­sued a mes­sage in one of his fi­nal voice notes stat­ing, "I fed up too, boy is years boy and no one (an­oth­er name used) to as­cer­tain the truth, no­body to go to. It has re­al men who have to get their mask rip (sic) off, and we have to come to­geth­er. Un­mask some of these mon­sters and bring a lit­tle jus­tice and stop this un­nec­es­sary mad killing. I'm down for it full 100 I have no prob­lem dy­ing for this cause boy. These mis­chief-mak­ers have to get dis­ci­plined. I'm down for it full 100 and who's against it well, I'm against them and that is the code there.

 Ac­cord­ing to the se­nior in­tel­li­gence source, they are not treat­ing this in­for­ma­tion light­ly. "The reper­cus­sions of an in­ter­nal war could have dead­ly con­se­quences even for oth­er gangs in the com­ing weeks."

The of­fi­cer said that they are still try­ing to as­cer­tain who ex­act­ly the gang mem­ber had sent the voice notes to and who he had been speak­ing to.

"We al­so have to look at if this in­for­ma­tion was in­ten­tion­al­ly put out there and what was the rea­son­ing be­hind it," the source added.

What the In­ter­cep­tion Of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act says

The In­ter­cep­tion Of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act (IO­CA) took ef­fect in De­cem­ber 2010 and was es­tab­lished sole­ly in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, for the pre­ven­tion and de­tec­tion of se­ri­ous crime, for the pur­pose of safe­guard­ing the so­cial and eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of the State and for the pur­pose of giv­ing ef­fect to the pro­vi­sion of any in­ter­na­tion­al mu­tu­al as­sis­tance.

IO­CA states com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­cludes any­thing com­pris­ing speech, mu­sic, sounds, vi­su­al im­ages or da­ta of any de­scrip­tion or sig­nals be­tween per­sons, be­tween a per­son and a thing or be­tween things or for the ac­tu­a­tion or con­trol of any ap­pa­ra­tus, and whether or not done in re­al-time; “dis­clo­sure or­der” means an or­der un­der sec­tion 15 re­quir­ing the dis­clo­sure of a pro­tect­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion; “elec­tron­ic sig­na­ture” means any­thing in elec­tron­ic (a) is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to, or oth­er­wise log­i­cal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with, any elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion or oth­er elec­tron­ic da­ta; (b) is gen­er­at­ed by the sig­na­to­ry or oth­er source of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion or da­ta; and (c) is used for the pur­pose of fa­cil­i­tat­ing, by means of a link be­tween the sig­na­to­ry or oth­er source and the com­mu­ni­ca­tion or da­ta, the es­tab­lish­ment of the au­then­tic­i­ty of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion or da­ta, the es­tab­lish­ment of its in­tegri­ty, or both; “in­ter­cept”, in re­la­tion to a com­mu­ni­ca­tion, means lis­ten­ing to, mon­i­tor­ing, view­ing, read­ing or record­ing, by any means, such a com­mu­ni­ca­tion in its pas­sage over a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work with­out the knowl­edge of the per­son mak­ing or re­ceiv­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion."