Carisa Lee

“Girl, 10, among eight wound­ed in Barataria shootout,” “Two in­fants wound­ed in San­gre Grande mass shoot­ing” and “Chil­dren, 9 & 11, shot in head, chest.”

These are just some of the head­lines that have rocked T&T this year.

For­tu­nate­ly, these chil­dren did not lose their lives. Nine-year-old Jo­mol Mod­este and Naz­im Owen, aged three, weren’t so lucky. They were both shot dead as gun­men tar­get­ed the adults around them.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice sta­tis­tics, six chil­dren have been mur­dered for the year— one girl and five boys. At least half of them were shot dead.

In the last 10 years, 150 chil­dren were mur­dered.

Ad­dress­ing this, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace said since 2000, the men­tal­i­ty of crim­i­nals has changed.

“I think what’s hap­pen­ing now is that you have a dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tion of law­break­ers. They have ab­solute­ly no care, no re­spect for au­thor­i­ty fig­ures, they have no re­spect, no care, em­pa­thy for any­one but them­selves, so chil­dren in their minds are sim­ply col­lat­er­al dam­age,” he said.

Wal­lace said crim­i­nals used to have an un­of­fi­cial code that pro­tect­ed women, chil­dren and the el­der­ly. But to­day, they are much younger and are try­ing to prove a point, he said.

“If they are look­ing for some­one and they find that per­son, they are go­ing to elim­i­nate that per­son no mat­ter who is in the midst,” he said.

That’s ex­act­ly how one wit­ness of a shoot­ing that left two chil­dren wound­ed ear­li­er this year ex­plained what hap­pened.

“A ve­hi­cle pull up and you see sud­den fire like fire­works, no bac­cha­nal, no quar­rel, no con­fu­sion, peo­ple lim­ing and drink­ing and so­cial­is­ing and this car just pull up and a guy came with a hood­ie on and is fire­works,” he said.

The man said the crim­i­nals saw women and chil­dren among the crowd but that did not stop them.

“Long time when them gun­men go­ing and do they thing and they see chil­dren and fam­i­ly, they will still wait and hold back but like they doh care again,” he said.

Wal­lace added that the lack of com­pas­sion and em­pa­thy came from what they mim­ic from crimes com­mit­ted in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca.

“That ap­pears, in my es­ti­ma­tion, to be mod­el­ling more so Mex­i­co and Colom­bia,” he said.

The last three an­nu­al Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) re­ports not­ed there was an emer­gence of younger, more vi­o­lent lead­ers, as well as new­er gangs an­tic­i­pat­ed to be more volatile as they try to es­tab­lish them­selves, re­sult­ing in an in­crease in mur­ders, in­juries, shoot­ings and oth­er vi­o­lent crimes.

In 2009, af­ter Tecia Hen­ry, 10, was stran­gled amidst a war­ring gang feud in Laven­tille, a peace ac­cord named af­ter her was es­tab­lished. It start­ed at the end of June 2009 and last­ed un­til April 2010.

Wal­lace said as a par­ent and ed­u­ca­tor, it both­ers him to know that a young child who has bare­ly lived can be killed while go­ing to school or at a so­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.

“It pains me very much,” he said.

He said the po­lice need to do more to get the firearms off the street, first­ly by se­cur­ing the porous bor­ders.

“There is no coun­try in the Caribbean that pro­duces firearms,” he said.

He said the weapons found in this coun­try are man­u­fac­tured in Amer­i­ca and South Amer­i­ca.

“I have al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed for the re­turn of the po­lice ma­rine branch, what we have in Trinidad is land polic­ing,” he said.

A com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist, who asked to re­main anony­mous, agreed with Wal­lace. He said while the killing of chil­dren is not new, the crim­i­nals are younger.

“You give a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 16-year-old a gun and let them know it have a man in a car I want you to fix that man and this gun bussing 10 shots at a time, 15 shots at a time, he can’t con­trol that, all he know is that when you squeeze, plen­ty com­ing out,” he said.

The com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist blamed gang lead­ers for this and said he does not think chil­dren like Jo­mol and Naz­im were killed on pur­pose.

“They out of con­trol be­cause of the peo­ple who in charge of them... you know you big and have more sense and have un­der­stand­ing on how to do things, you know it have chil­dren out there, you still send­ing them and giv­ing them that gun to go… you is to be held ac­count­able be­cause this is youths with no mind… They us­ing the... chil­dren to do every­thing... they send­ing out chil­dren,” he said.

He al­so lament­ed crim­i­nals who put their chil­dren’s in­no­cent lives in dan­ger.

“You can’t live in the light if you do­ing nasty hideous things in the dark,” he said.

He be­lieves the po­lice can stop all the killings be­cause they know who the crim­i­nals are.

For­mer in­sur­rec­tion­ist Lor­ris Bal­lack agreed but said it will take an all-hands-on-deck ap­proach. He said the ju­di­cial sys­tem is slow and crim­i­nals know and take ad­van­tage of this. He added that some mem­bers of the TTPS and oth­ers in au­thor­i­ty are cor­rupt and en­cour­age crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“Those peo­ple have failed bad­ly. La­dy, this is an ice-cream...it melt­ing from the top and wet­ting up the cone,” he said.

As an el­der in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, Bal­lack ad­mit­ted the crim­i­nals are young and out of con­trol.

“They cyah shoot, they ain’t train to shoot, so they pass with a gun that re­peat­ing facts and they shoot down every­thing,” he said.

He said no one should have au­thor­i­ty over the cit­i­zen­ry, adding peace must be kept by the peo­ple.

Bal­lack said they are start­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion to help the poor called De­fend­ers of the Poor and the De­pressed.

It’s some­thing the founder of the St James Po­lice Youth Club, act­ing Cor­po­ral Der­rick Shar­bod­ie, has been do­ing for the last 30 years.

He said over 10,000 chil­dren had passed through his club since then, where they par­tic­i­pate in var­i­ous cours­es like car­pen­try, danc­ing, foot­ball and ba­sic com­put­er skills.

It al­so of­fers pro­grammes for chil­dren and their par­ents.

“We feel like the par­ents must be in­volved in or­der to net­work ... It will be a suc­cess if the par­ents are in­volved in this youth and par­ent­ing em­pow­er­ment pro­grammes,” he said.

But as some­one who has ded­i­cat­ed his life to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ing the lives of chil­dren, he said it hurts to see the fu­ture snatched away from them be­cause of crime.

“There is a new rule. These gangs are code­less, they have no re­spect for life… it’s al­ready a sad day that men are shoot­ing down men and to see now that there is no care for chil­dren and par­ents, es­pe­cial­ly moth­ers we re­al­ly have to say it’s a dark day,” Shar­bod­ie said.

He added, “It shows the chang­ing of the guards. There is a new gang leader now that has no care for chil­dren any­more and for life.”

He said young peo­ple are be­ing con­sumed in­to an at­mos­phere of gun vi­o­lence and that can­not con­tin­ue. He said there are many youths with po­ten­tial de­spite the en­vi­ron­ment they come from.

He said they have to find a spark in young peo­ple that is of­ten over­shad­owed by crime.

“We have to move them from hope­less to hope­ful­ness,” he said.