Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

“There’s go­ing to be a blood­bath.”

This was the chill­ing warn­ing from a pur­port­ed lieu­tenant of the Ras­ta City gang fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s sec­ond day of fiery protests in and around Port-of- Spain which were sparked by the po­lice killings of three Mor­vant men last Sat­ur­day.

“If you name po­lice from this week you marked for death! Man or woman, once you name po­lice you marked for death. Phase two we will deal with min­is­ters. Right now we deal­ing up with po­lice. Is years up­on years po­lice op­press­ing we,” the Ras­ta City lieu­tenant told Guardian Me­dia af­ter reach­ing out to us yes­ter­day.

In a chill­ing voice, the gang­ster said this was just the be­gin­ning of an all-out war on the po­lice, adding all war­ring gangs had now come to­geth­er as one unit to fight against the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

“Lit­tle do they know we unite. All en­e­mies unite, we put all our dif­fer­ences aside to form one al­liance to war the biggest gang in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It will be bloody be­cause we have re­al guns and re­al man­pow­er.”

The Ras­ta City se­nior gang mem­ber said he was un­per­turbed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and his troops.

“Re­al po­lice go fall in Port-of-Spain, around Port-of-Spain and all over Trinidad be­cause the Ras­ta City, Mus­lim City and ATB na­tion­wide.”

With the pub­lic al­ready on edge, the gang mem­ber said they al­so want­ed to re­veal the al­leged wrong­do­ing of sev­er­al of­fi­cers in the TTPS and made no apolo­gies for their planned course of ac­tion.

He claimed, “They (of­fi­cers) have been fight­ing we down and killing we, do­ing we(sic) all kind of un­just things. Set­ting us up and tak­ing men from John John and drop­ping them on Nel­son and Dun­can for man to rebel and kill them.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go go­ing and make his­to­ry, they will nev­er know Trinidad have all this fire­pow­er.”

The gang­ster al­so al­leged that min­is­ters were al­so part of the prob­lem. “Min­is­ters deal­ing with gang­sters on a dai­ly ba­sis, they giv­ing us guns, they giv­ing us mon­ey. They pay we (sic) to do cer­tain things. Every­thing is po­lit­i­cal, this thing go­ing and get out of hand. Gary Grif­fith talk­ing about 40 days and he foil some plot. They nev­er had any plot. He just like ah set­ta star boy thing, he is a Hol­ly­wood ac­tor you know, he’s ah ac­tor,” the gang­ster said.

The lieu­tenant ex­plained that the killing of Joel Ja­cob, Noel Di­a­mond and Is­rael Clin­ton in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, last Sat­ur­day, which sparked the protests, had deep­er con­nec­tions al­leged­ly linked to a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer.

The gang­ster claimed, “They came for the dri­ver but the two oth­er men pick up in­no­cent. This was why they clean up the crime scene, push back the car and all kin­da thing. This killing stem­ming from the killing of Du­fu. They kill him be­cause he was about to leak in­for­ma­tion. This is no ran­dom thing. This some­thing that was stir­ring up and it was in the mak­ing.”

Nigel “Du­fu” May­ers, 40, a re­put­ed gang leader from the Mor­vant area, was shot and killed by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) in late May. May­ers had been freed late last year with sev­er­al oth­er men for the mur­der of shop­keep­er Shirley Thomas in No­vem­ber 2010.

An­oth­er threat was al­so is­sued to Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and his men on so­cial me­dia by a male voice yes­ter­day.

The voice said, “Gary Grif­fith, you bet­ter put cam­eras on the po­lice and them from now on dread, cus just now we go­ing and kill them po­lice and them the same way they killing peo­ple. We will not done (sic), I know what I telling you. You bet­ter pass that bill and put them cam­eras on them po­lice and them cus (sic) they treat­ing we un­just and we go­ing and start to treat them un­just. We will bring out the big guns Grif­fith. I know what I telling you. We will start to kill them po­lice and them.”

Speak­ing on CNC3’s live pro­gramme Un­der Fire on Tues­day evening, how­ev­er, Grif­fith said he was not per­turbed by the ap­par­ent coali­tion of the gangs. While call­ing for calm in the coun­try, Grif­fith said he would not let crim­i­nal el­e­ments run the show as they do in parts of Ja­maica.

“It stops, to­day, we are not go­ing to al­low crim­i­nal el­e­ments to feel like you can con­trol any area, any block, any com­mu­ni­ty and then play the blame game,” Grif­fith said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young yes­ter­day about the chill­ing com­ments made by the se­nior Ras­ta City gang mem­ber.

Young said, “Such a threat needs to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and ver­i­fied by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and oth­er arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. It is some­thing that we would not take light­ly. I sup­port the work of the TTPS and would nev­er con­done or sup­port crim­i­nal­i­ty or il­le­gal­i­ty by any­one.”