War­ring fac­tions of two San­gre Grande gangs pledged a peace pact yes­ter­day af­ter mem­bers sur­ren­dered their firearms to the po­lice.

Of­fi­cers said two firearms were brought in from ei­ther gang and giv­en to of­fi­cers who had been coax­ing gang mem­bers to give up the feud­ing. The ini­tia­tive was or­gan­ised and im­ple­ment­ed by Se­nior Supt Mar­garet Samp­son-Brown and in­clud­ed Sgt Bev­er­ly Paul, mem­bers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion­al Task Force and of­fi­cers of the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Samp­son-Brown, it was up­on re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion that Task Force of­fi­cers went to a house at Damarie Hill in San­gre Grande around 1 am yes­ter­day and re­cov­ered a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion, in­clud­ing a 12 gauge shot­gun, car­tridges and two re­volvers at an aban­doned house. Three peo­ple were up to late yes­ter­day as­sist­ing po­lice with in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Samp­son-Brown said the op­er­a­tion was the cul­mi­na­tion of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and hard-work on the part of her ded­i­cat­ed of­fi­cers.

Fol­low­ing re­peat­ed com­plaints by Damarie Hill res­i­dents about the up­surge of shoot­ings in the area, Samp­son-Brown said po­lice brought in some 20 re­put­ed gang mem­bers in­to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion late Wednes­day af­ter­noon. "I spoke to these young men, plead­ing with them to put down their weapons be­cause they were ei­ther go­ing to die by a po­lice bul­let or by one of an op­pos­ing gang," Samp­son-Brown said.

She said talks were al­so held with par­ents who ex­pressed frus­tra­tion re­gard­ing their sons' er­rant be­hav­iour. "One par­ent said she was tired of speak­ing to her son and ad­mit­ted he was in pos­ses­sion of a gun," Samp­son-Brown said. The de­lib­er­a­tion with the gang mem­bers end­ed dur­ing the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day fol­low­ing which the young men ex­pressed re­morse for their ac­tions, she added.