DAREECE POLO
Senior Reporter
dareece.polo@guardian.co.tt
PART THREE
Years ago, before he became Apostle Gary Grant, “Strongly” lived a life of crime where he participated in home invasions, robberies with aggravation and car theft.
Prison became a familiar destination. At one point, he had grown so accustomed to incarceration that two of his daughters were born while he was behind bars.
“Ah get fed up of going in and out of prison, and at least two of my daughters were born while I was incarcerated.”
Today, Grant stands behind a church pulpit, preaching a different message. But he says deciding to leave gang life was far easier than actually doing it.
“I wanted to stop, but I just didn’t know how to. There were times I would say, ‘All right, I done ah that.’ And then when meh friends come and call me and say, ‘Aye, we have a hot car,’ which is a stolen car, ‘and we have a scene to go on.’ When I check my pocket, I broken. So I will end up going with them.”
Grant’s story forms another chapter of Guardian Media’s series examining the realities behind gang violence in Trinidad and Tobago following a United Kingdom Home Office estimate that there were 186 active gangs operating in the country in 2023.
Over three days, residents described communities shaped by violence, poverty and neglect.
The final question was different: once someone decides to leave gang life, is there enough waiting for them on the outside?
For Grant, change began in prison.
“When I start to read the Bible now, I start to see something contrary to that. And then after I started to apply what I read to my life and then I became a Christian whilst in prison, became a pastor whilst in prison and then I changed my life.”
He believes leaving gang life required more than changing his behaviour. It meant changing the way he viewed the world.
“It have a guy I used to ride with, and he had a belief that white people is demon and dey is Babylon and rich people is Babylon too. So we used to believe that God sent us as avenging angels to take vengeance on the wicked. And the wicked was white people and rich people. So we used to go out and rob them.”
After his release, Grant spent nearly two decades working in vulnerable communities through government intervention programmes.
He says the initiatives that achieved the greatest success had one thing in common – trust.
“Because of the relationship that they had with the persons on the ground in the community, when it was time to bring programmes into the community, it was easy. Because they trusted the person and know the person, and therefore we could have implemented the programmes and get the right persons in the programmes. Because what happens sometimes you have a programme and not the right person, not the high-risk persons you get to come. You might get young people to come, but not the ones that really need the intervention.”
Residents across Laventille said those relationships have become increasingly difficult to sustain as programmes disappear and opportunities diminish.
A resident of Snake Valley, speaking on condition of anonymity, recalled participating in Project Building Blocks, where he learned rabbit rearing. Today, the cages remain, but the programme does not.
He says the end of the initiative left many residents without productive outlets.
“We ent have no programme... They ent even doing no work in the community. Thing to make people active. When a boy just home whole day doing nothing, yuh hungry. You ent obligated to anything because yuh home doing nothing.”
The resident believes the problem extends beyond one project.
“It have no URP neither. It have no Forestry. It have no Cepep.”
Asked whether he noticed a difference after those programmes ended, he replied: “Yeah, more prostitution. More violence. You know how much brothers I know went and get bullet and end up in jail, all kinda thing, trying to rob and all kind of mad thing?”
For many residents, distrust extends beyond employment programmes to the institutions responsible for protecting them.
One St Barbs resident, whose son was killed, said she no longer trusts the police.
“I cyah have trust in dem, again. How I could have trust when they kill meh son? And they only coming down in the yard here and harassing the yard. And they break down meh doors and them and they never buy back none.”
Grant believes rebuilding those relationships is essential if communities are to move beyond cycles of violence.
“We cannot police our way out of crime. We cannot lock up our way out of crime. There must be the social aspect. There must be the human trust. There must be the part where yuh interact with the community, not on the level of law enforcement but through social work as well.”
He acknowledges crime remains a serious challenge but rejects the idea that people’s futures are predetermined.
Over the past three days, residents described lives shaped by violence, neglect and loss.
Yet amid abandoned buildings, shuttered programmes and fractured trust, many also returned to the same belief that another path is possible—but only if communities are offered more than promises.
Tomorrow, Guardian Media examines how the state is examining these concerns.
