Rel­a­tives in grief and shock fol­low­ing the shoot­ing of three men at Lib­er­ty Bar, St Joseph Road, Laven­tille, Port-of-spain, on Fri­day night.

Rhon­dor Dowlat

Gangs and gang wars are on the rise in T&T. Sta­tis­tics re­veal that in 2017 there were 211 gangs in T&T—an in­crease from 172 in 2016 and 92 in 2014. Gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders to­talled 998 be­tween 2010 and 2017, while the num­ber of guns seized in gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties in T&T stands at 4,674 (as of 2017)—with some 1,195 firearms seized in 2016 alone. And the num­bers of gangs and guns in their hands keep grow­ing.

The Sun­day Guardian was in­formed by a source in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that a "se­cret doc­u­ment" con­tain­ing the names of gangs, gang mem­bers, and re­spec­tive ad­dress­es/lo­ca­tions of the peo­ple and gangs in the coun­try up to this time, is cur­rent­ly in the pos­ses­sion of Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams.

But what ex­act­ly is be­ing done to deal with gangs and gang war­fare in T&T?

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Williams said he could not di­vulge what the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was do­ing with re­spect to deal­ing with gangs, nei­ther di­vulge if they ac­tu­al­ly have any in­for­ma­tion with re­spect to who the gang lead­ers and mem­bers are, but he as­sured that they are "do­ing key things" to ad­dress gangs.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said what is need­ed to dis­man­tle these gangs is a Covert Op­er­a­tional Unit (COU) in the Po­lice Ser­vice. The COU al­lows for of­fi­cers to go “un­der­cov­er deep in the un­der­world” us­ing an as­sumed iden­ti­ty for the pur­pose of gath­er­ing or con­firm­ing con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion.

Grif­fith said dur­ing his tenure with the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment he im­ple­ment­ed a COU. How­ev­er, that was short-lived since he was re­moved from of­fice and the unit has since been dis­band­ed.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian, Grif­fith ex­plained that when the unit was in op­er­a­tion he re­ceived crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion, such as names and iden­ti­ties of key fig­ures in gangs in T&T.

Grif­fith said the of­fi­cers were al­so able to pin­point po­lice of­fi­cers who were af­fil­i­at­ed with cer­tain gangs. He said they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about planned “hits” and gangs be­ing giv­en state con­tracts un­der cer­tain names. He said it was through this ini­tia­tive that they re­alised over 35 mur­ders were linked to the de­funct Life Sport Pro­gramme, which was un­der the Min­istry of Sports. The then min­is­ter, Anil Roberts had ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion in 2014 in the wake of sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion aris­ing from the pro­gramme.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, when I was re­moved as min­is­ter the unit was dis­man­tled,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith said he strong­ly be­lieves that the present hi­er­ar­chy in the TTPS does not un­der­stand how to use tech­nol­o­gy and covert op­er­a­tions to “as­cer­tain and pin­point gangs get­ting state con­tracts...It shows the in­abil­i­ty of the hi­er­ar­chy of the Po­lice Ser­vice to use these types of sys­tems to shut down the gangs.”

The dis­tri­b­u­tion of state con­tracts was iden­ti­fied as a main con­trib­u­tor to the fu­elling of gangs and its op­er­a­tions.

“All gang mem­bers who have an af­fil­i­a­tion with any­one who has state con­tracts, those con­tracts need to be pulled and it is not be­ing done,” Grif­fith said.

He ex­plained that the “more con­tracts” be­ing giv­en to these gangs will fund the gangs al­low­ing them to “get bold­er…they are go­ing to get more prof­it, pur­chase more so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapons, they will hire more gang mem­bers, they will bribe more peo­ple, they will get more state con­tracts and look to kill oth­er gang mem­bers who have con­tacts to get their con­tracts, and it will have a domi­no ef­fect.”

Re­spond­ing to calls for a COU, Williams said "I don't know what they mean by a Covert Op­er­a­tional Unit...well, you would not want me to com­ment whether we have un­der­cov­er cops deep in the un­der­world...you don't ex­pect me to com­ment on some­thing like that. I wouldn't speak on that.

"Mat­ters deal­ing with gangs are some­thing that we can­not be com­ment­ing on. What we do is not avail­able to the pub­lic be­cause if it be­comes avail­able it will reach the gang lead­ers and mem­bers, but we would be do­ing key things and are do­ing key things to ad­dress the gangs."

Dis­man­tling gangs
is a long-term
project—Figueira

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira, mean­while, said that in or­der to ef­fec­tive­ly po­lice gangs “you have to pen­e­trate these gangs us­ing var­i­ous meth­ods to dis­man­tle them.”

He said the An­ti-Gang Bill gives the po­lice a wide range of pow­ers, but will on­ly al­low ar­rests and may not give way to ac­quir­ing that need­ed ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute and get peo­ple to tes­ti­fy.

“Ev­i­dence gath­er­ing and get­ting peo­ple to tes­ti­fy could on­ly come if you pen­e­trate the or­gan­i­sa­tions (re­fer­ring to the var­i­ous gangs) and it takes time. It is a long-term project,” Figueira said.

“Now, with the An­ti-Gang Bill po­lice will on­ly be ar­rest­ing and charg­ing them, load­ing up the Re­mand Yard which turns in­to gang­land, which we al­ready have. The Mus­lims and Ras­ta City gangs start­ed in the Re­mand Yard and it’s now out and that is the prob­lem,” he added.

Figueira ques­tioned whether the TTPS has the means, per­son­nel, and re­sources to dis­man­tle gangs in T&T.

The pub­lic must as­sist in tak­ing them down—Heer­ah

Com­man­der Garvin Heer­ah, for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC), said that the pre­vail­ing threat fac­ing T&T is the emerg­ing struc­ture and ex­is­tence of or­gan­ised crime and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Heer­ah said with this comes re­cruit­ment and 'links' in key po­si­tions, agen­cies, and pub­lic of­fices.

“Very vis­i­ble in so­ci­ety to­day is the cross-fer­til­i­sa­tion of mil­i­tan­cy and crim­i­nal­i­ty. These crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions have lead­er­ship and com­mand and con­trol. Some­one, some fig­ure, some­where gives in­struc­tions and with mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion, they are car­ried out, more so ex­e­cut­ed.

“They have their own judge, ju­ry, and ex­e­cu­tion­er.”

Heer­ah said crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions can in­clude small op­er­a­tions with a hand­ful of in­di­vid­u­als who are in­volved in sell­ing drugs and com­mit­ting pet­ty crimes. It can al­so in­clude large-scale or­gan­i­sa­tions that par­tic­i­pate in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties as well as le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, of­ten com­bin­ing le­gal and un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ties to help le­git­imise their or­gan­i­sa­tion and hide the il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

“In some cas­es, these or­gan­ised groups/gangs are linked with for­eign coun­ter­parts who are fa­cil­i­tat­ing sup­port ser­vices and re­sources,” Heer­ah said.

Iden­ti­fy­ing the two types of gangs—the street gangs or the com­mon ones and the white-col­lar ones, Heer­ah de­scribed both gangs as “in­tel­li­gent or­gan­i­sa­tions, far more in­tel­li­gent than the av­er­age per­son or po­lice of­fi­cer thinks. It re­quires a par­tic­u­lar skills-set to take them down that in­cludes en­cour­ag­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to as­sist safe­ly when they can.

“I would ar­gue that suc­cess­ful pre­ven­tion of gang vi­o­lence re­quires change in at­ti­tudes, so­cial norms, gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies, and so­cial in­fra­struc­tures. Every mem­ber of the so­ci­ety should take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pre­vent­ing gang vi­o­lence. The ini­tia­tive has to be in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al in its bear­ing,” Heer­ah said.

'Man­ning's biggest po­lit­i­cal mis­take'

...he tried to em­pow­er them

Crim­i­nol­o­gist and Aca­d­e­m­ic Head Caribbean In­sti­tute for Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Safe­ty Ian Ramd­hanie said one of the biggest po­lit­i­cal mis­takes of the late, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was to re­fer to gang lead­ers as com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. Ramd­hanie said Man­ning tried ‘re­verse psy­chol­o­gy’ to em­pow­er them to see if it could bring about pos­i­tive change, but it back­fired in his face.

He said this prac­tice should be crim­i­nalised im­me­di­ate­ly and any gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty that gives con­tracts to gang lead­ers should be dealt with se­vere­ly by the law, “de­vel­op new law with this pro­vi­sion.”

“Just as for cit­i­zens who need a cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter from the po­lice to get cer­tain jobs for ex­am­ple, so too should all per­sons who are vy­ing for gov­ern­ment con­tracts be re­quired to get one in­clud­ing gang lead­ers, gang mem­bers, as­so­ciates, etc. A strong mes­sage needs to be sent. They should al­so be re­quired to get fi­nan­cial clear­ance from the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) or some oth­er fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tor, for ex­am­ple,” he added

With re­spect to known gangs by state au­thor­i­ties, Ramd­hanie sug­gest­ed that these should be on a black­list when it comes to gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

He said pri­vate and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies who ten­der for gov­ern­ment con­tracts and use lead­ers and mem­bers of gangs on these con­tracts should be de­barred.

Ramd­hanie said a list of these known gangs should be pub­lished and be on a web­site so peo­ple will know not to do busi­ness with them.

“We should not make gangs feel ac­cept­ed in­to main­stream so­ci­ety...They should not ben­e­fit from our wealth. They should be in jail, not work­ing for us while oth­er le­git­i­mate or­gan­i­sa­tions lose out,” he said.