JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

Chair­man of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber Mar­tin George wants the re­ports on gangs to change from ba­sic sta­tis­ti­cal re­ports to up­dates on how many ar­rests of gang mem­bers have been made.

Speak­ing on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3;s The Morn­ing Brew, George stat­ed it was not enough for the Po­lice Ser­vice—or any­one else—to sim­ply re­port that there are X num­ber of gangs in the coun­try.

To­ba­go’s Chief Sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine, re­cent­ly used sta­tis­tics to pin­point the num­ber of gangs cur­rent­ly ac­tive in To­ba­go.  He re­port­ed that they had in­creased from three gangs in 2009 to 28 in 2025.

But Mar­tin George as­serts the au­thor­i­ties must do more to ad­dress and ar­rest gang cul­ture, in­stead of just spout­ing sta­tis­tics.

“Why haven’t you told me that you have ar­rest­ed the mem­bers of these 28 gangs? That’s what I want to hear,” he ar­gued.  “Don’t tell me fool­ish sta­tis­tics like there are 28 gangs.  Tell me you have ar­rest­ed the mem­bers of these 28 gangs.  That would be some­thing I’d be im­pressed with.”

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man says be­ing in a gang is against the law—the coun­try has an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion in place—and it must be en­forced.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern that many of the To­ba­go gangs are home-grown and may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be of-shoots of gangs in Trinidad or else­where.

He said To­bag­o­ni­ans know who is in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land, and re­mind­ed them that they have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to rid their com­mu­ni­ties of these crim­i­nals by alert­ing the au­thor­i­ties to their ac­tiv­i­ties.

“The re­al­i­ty is that there are so many home-grown, lo­cal ban­dits in To­ba­go who are be­com­ing part of the es­tab­lished gang cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” George point­ed out. 

The TTPS has sched­uled a me­dia brief­ing for to­day, at which it is ex­pect­ed to give an up­date on the num­ber of ar­rests made dur­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.