Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The sheer bru­tal­i­ty and reck­less na­ture of crim­i­nal gangs should cause them to be cat­e­gorised as ter­ror­ist groups, which would then al­low for a more ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse.

This was the po­si­tion of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, as he out­lined sug­ges­tions dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s An­ti-crime Town Hall Meet­ing at the Er­ic Williams Au­di­to­ri­um, La Joya Com­plex, St Joseph, last night.

Grif­fith, who served as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice from 2018 to 2021 and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, was one of the pan­el­lists at the meet­ing.

Dur­ing his open­ing re­marks, Grif­fith not­ed that the ease of ac­cess crim­i­nals have to au­to­mat­ic weapons should cause the au­thor­i­ties to re­con­sid­er how crime is seen and ad­dressed.

“We have cer­tain per­sons—these crim­i­nal el­e­ments—who have as­sault weapons, au­to­mat­ic weapons that can fire 35 rounds in three sec­onds. If that is not a ter­ror­ist, I don’t know what is,” Grif­fith told the au­di­ence.

“I would rec­om­mend what we need to do is look at this same An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act. If we place these in­di­vid­u­als where they be­long—as ter­ror­ists, it now pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go af­ter the in­di­vid­u­als with full force to en­sure they are sen­tenced as a cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment of 25 years in prison.

“It al­so goes af­ter in­di­vid­u­als who are aid­ing and abet­ting these gangs, from fel­low gang mem­bers and even to cer­tain politi­cians.”

Grif­fith al­so sug­gest­ed that the T&T De­fence Force as­sume a more proac­tive role in crime sup­pres­sion.

He lament­ed that while the De­fence Force had the man­pow­er to ef­fec­tive­ly treat with crime, they were used on­ly in joint po­lice pa­trols with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which he felt yield­ed lit­tle re­sults.

“We have a T&T De­fence Force, 5,000-strong and they stay in camp and the rea­son for it is be­cause they are boxed in a sit­u­a­tion where they don’t have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to come out and op­er­ate as they should. This is not a time for be­ing cos­met­ic, we are un­der siege, we are at war.”

He sug­gest­ed that the au­thor­i­ties use Chap­ter 14:01 of the De­fence Force Act to bring in sol­diers to treat with crim­i­nals.

Sec­tion 238(1) of the De­fence Act, Chap 14:01, al­lows the Pres­i­dent to call out the Vol­un­teer De­fence Force or any por­tion of it for ac­tu­al mil­i­tary ser­vice with their arms and am­mu­ni­tion, in aid of the civ­il pow­er in any case in which a ri­ot, dis­tur­bance of the peace, or oth­er emer­gency.

For her part, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, who was al­so part of the pan­el, called on par­ents to take a more ac­tive role in their chil­dren.

She not­ed that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of teenagers (Gen­er­a­tion Z) demon­strat­ed un­de­sir­able traits of en­ti­tle­ment and warned that in­ad­e­quate su­per­vi­sion could lead to more an­ti-so­cial traits.

“I am ask­ing the par­ents out there to pay at­ten­tion to what your chil­dren are do­ing and take con­trol. They com­plain to me about their chil­dren, I am not their par­ent. You are the par­ent take con­trol!” she said.

Among the at­ten­dees were re­tired Snr Supt of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Ken­ny McIn­tyre and re­tired ACP John­ny Abra­ham, who al­so of­fered their sug­ges­tions on how to max­imise po­lice re­sources and cov­er­age.

The meet­ing, which be­gan prompt­ly at 6 pm, at­tract­ed throngs of par­tic­i­pants, who packed the au­di­to­ri­um to full ca­pac­i­ty with­in min­utes.

Peo­ple who could not find a seat stood at the side of the au­di­to­ri­um, while oth­ers lined the cor­ri­dor out­side the hall and lis­tened to sug­ges­tions from the speak­ers, who al­so in­clud­ed pathol­o­gist Hu­bert Dais­ley.