It looked like a scene from a crime thriller, but the events cap­tured on CCTV were a very re­al gang at­tack on a home in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia Mor­vant ear­li­er this week.

The in­tent of those men, armed with firearms and Molo­tov cock­tails, was on­ly thwart­ed be­cause they were un­able to break in­to the house, and their in­tend­ed vic­tims, re­port­ed to be rel­a­tives of the leader of a ri­val gang, man­aged to es­cape.

It was a brazen day­light at­tack, typ­i­cal of the vi­o­lent, usu­al­ly dead­ly, as­saults car­ried out al­most dai­ly by mem­bers of this coun­try’s crim­i­nal un­der­world. What was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing about this case was that it was al­leged­ly or­ches­trat­ed by gang lead­ers who are in prison on mur­der charges. Even worse, it was one in­ci­dent in a gang war which is re­port­ed­ly be­ing waged in Mor­vant and en­vi­rons for con­trol of state con­tracts.

Gang ri­val­ries that reg­u­lar­ly es­ca­late in­to bru­tal bat­tles for ter­ri­to­ry, state con­tracts, and con­trol of the il­le­gal drugs and weapons trade are now the rule rather than the ex­cep­tion in com­mu­ni­ties across this coun­try. This time it is Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, but war­ring gangs have spread ter­ror in South Oropouche, En­ter­prise, East Port-of-Spain, and oth­er parts of the coun­try, test­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of law en­force­ment who al­ways seem to be a few steps be­hind these blood­thirsty crim­i­nals and un­able to ful­ly grasp the na­ture and ex­tent of their in­flu­ence on the com­mu­ni­ties in which they are en­trenched.

It de­fies log­ic that these gang­sters, who have in the past been er­ro­neous­ly por­trayed as “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers’’, still have ac­cess to short-term pub­lic works em­ploy­ment projects and are there­fore able to di­vert mil­lions of dol­lars worth of state funds to sup­port their il­lic­it op­er­a­tions.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and at least two of her pre­de­ces­sors at the helm of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) have launched an­ti-gang ex­er­cis­es but have had lit­tle or no suc­cess break­ing their stran­gle­hold in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try. If any­thing, the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting worse as ev­i­denced by the mur­der count, which raced past 300 this week and, at the cur­rent rate, will sur­pass the hor­rif­ic 605 record of 2022.

Com­mis­sion­er Christo­pher’s re­luc­tance, or in­abil­i­ty, to ac­count to the pub­lic for the wors­en­ing crime sit­u­a­tion on­ly adds to the per­cep­tion that the of­fi­cers un­der her charge are be­ing out­ma­noeu­vred by the crim­i­nals. Her si­lence is deaf­en­ing and un­ac­cept­able–she needs to be seen and heard more reg­u­lar­ly.

With these lat­est rev­e­la­tions about gang­sters con­tin­u­ing to wage bru­tal bat­tles for con­trol of state projects, T&T al­so re­quires an ex­pla­na­tion from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds about why these un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ties are tak­ing place right un­der the nose of the Gov­ern­ment and what will be done to put a stop to these cor­rupt prac­tices.

Some years ago, when the ex­tent to which state make-work pro­grammes and con­tract­ing mech­a­nisms be­ing pen­e­trat­ed by crim­i­nal gangs was ex­posed, promis­es were made to crack down on such ac­tiv­i­ties. Oth­er­wise, these crim­i­nals will con­tin­ue to ham­per T&T’s de­vel­op­ment, and mur­der will con­tin­ue to be the lead­ing cause of death among our young men and boys.

By now it should be clear­ly un­der­stood by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties that the com­plex­i­ty of T&T’s gang prob­lem de­mands mul­ti­fac­eted so­lu­tions in­cor­po­rat­ing pre­ven­tion, in­ter­ven­tion, and sup­pres­sion. If the right strate­gies are im­ple­ment­ed, there will be mea­sur­able re­sults with few­er mur­ders and oth­er vi­o­lent at­tacks and a marked in­crease in ar­rests and con­vic­tions.