Community activist and general manager of the ROOTS Foundation, Mtima Solwazi, says recent incidents in which children were murdered, wounded, or narrowly escaped shootings are an example of the breakdown of community-level principles.
On March 23, 17-year-old Jordan Burke was one of three people gunned down at a house on Sunset Drive, Penal.
Days later, on March 26, a 14-year-old boy was shot and wounded during a drive-by shooting on Davis Street, Belmont.
On March 31, 11-month-old Jayden Sutton was shot and killed along with his father, 25-year-old Joseph Sutton, at their home on Dundonald Hill, St James.
Early on the morning of April 7, a one-year-old boy narrowly escaped gunfire following a shooting that ended with the death of Anthony Leroy Francis and the wounding of Francis’ pregnant girlfriend on Moonan Road, Wallerfield.
Speaking with Guardian Media Ltd on Tuesday evening, Solwazi lamented that, unlike their predecessors, who, despite their life choices, observed some code of conduct, modern criminals were more unpredictable and did not show restraint where children were concerned.
“We have seen this pattern evolving where now there is no regard whatsoever not only to children, but to women, because interestingly and as strange as it may seem or sound there were rules and laws governing street behaviour.
“There were actual laws on the street where you would not violate women, children, the elderly and over the years that has been eroding.”
Solwazi, who has worked closely through the foundation with neighbourhood youth outreach programmes, said breaking these “street rules” was often met with swift action from people within their own clique, noting that past gang leaders would even push rogue members to turn themselves in to the police.
He therefore suggested that people who now identified themselves as gang leaders did not have proper control over their underlings.
“You’re not hearing on the ground that men are being reined in or are being chastised by their own. I am saying there is only so much the police can do, there is only so much that we who are working on the streets with these young men can do... the leaders who claim to be the leaders of these young men have to take some accountability for them.
“Whether you like it or not a gang leader is a leader and if you are telling me that you are a gang leader and you have no control over what’s taking place with the men you are in charge of, that means we are in a sad state in T&T.”
