Gangs and Violence in Trinidad and Tobago: A Quick Look at Current Developments August 2013
Posted by HCN on Thursday, August 22, 2013 Under: Original story post and English
The following is a compilation of articles providing toward an overview of the situation of gangs, violence, crime, and implications of attitudes towards Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago. This compilation of articles was prompted resultant of the news article about 4 die from violence including teens within recent weeks.
Time to put spotlight on gangs
Story Created: Aug 21, 2013 at 9:43 PM ECT
Story Updated: Aug 21, 2013 at 9:43 PM ECT
Crime is the number one problem in Trinidad. The political stock of any Government rises and falls on its ability to control crime and in particular, murder. How can someone who has the means and determination to kill be stopped?
The recent upsurge in gang related criminal activity in East Port of Spain is a case in point. Without a doubt there is an urgent need for more targeted resources to address the gang problem and the propensity of urban youth to join them.
However, it might be useful to disaggregate the figures for gang related activity and murders from the overall crime assessment to provide better focus and evaluation of suppression efforts. It might just be less traumatic for us to say we have a criminal gang problem than to say we have a crime problem.
Gangsters are able to terrorise our country twice: before and after they kill each other. This is because these murders are added to the overall homicide figures and affect the psyche of the nation. An entire nation is branded as being murderous. To say a la Dookeran that the nation will not rise until Laventille rises is inaccurate. Who says Laventille is dead and buried? There is much good there despite the generations of red neglect. The aforementioned targeted approach must extricate the resident evil. Our nation is already great! We will only continue to rise when like a Jehue Gordon we can clear the hurdles of gang violence and drugs.
While every human life is important surely we must rationalise differently murders of gangsters by gangsters. It would help if we knew how many of the murdered this year were gangsters killed by their opponents or associates. Even in the underworld people rarely get killed for no reason.
We ought not to lump these killings with all the others including persons killed in domestic violence. Let us put the spotlight on gangsters and perhaps there will be a manicou effect. Let’s move beyond the mantra of ‘gang related’ and give the figures as well.
The police gang unit must provide an analysis of gang culture which could be used by parents, teachers, and community members to identify and counsel potential transgressors. This, together with hard policing must be the way to go.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/letters/Time-to-put-spotlight-on-gangs-220600321.html
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Trinidad Gangs in Violent Dispute Over Govt Contracts
Wednesday, 21 August 2013
A Trinidad crime boss and his 600-strong gang are reportedly behind a recent flare up of violence on the island as they compete with rivals for lucrative government contracts, highlighting the deep penetration of gangs into Caribbean civic life.
The unnamed gang leader, linked to controversial Muslim organization Jamaat al Muslimeen, controls 21 "clips" (local gang factions) -- some of which are exclusively Muslim -- operating in the troubled eastern and southern parts of the capital, Port of Spain, reported the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian.
According to an anonymous source consulted by the newspaper, a recent escalation in violence in eastern Port of Spain is being driven by the battle for community development contracts. Earlier this week 90 people were detained in police raids on the area, following six gang-related homicides within 24 hours.
From January to mid-August 2013, Port of Spain saw 236 homicides, reported the Trinidad Express.
InSight Crime Analysis
The links between gang activity and Jamaat al Muslimeen have existed for decades in Trinidad and Tobago, with this current leader characterized as the heir to Michael Guerra, a prominent crime boss and member of the Islamic organization who was assassinated in 2003.
Jamaat al Muslimeen is known to be involved in criminal activities but has also operated in the political realm, and was responsible for an attempted coup in 1990. Its members have also benefitted from government schemes, with Guerra reported to have earned up to $23,000 per month from an unemployment relief program.
The ability of criminal organizations to win contracts for community work seems to be related not only to corruption but also from government efforts to award such schemes to "community leaders." Throughout the Caribbean, the lines between criminal groups and community organizations are often blurred. In the absence of an effective state presence, such groups can be the only source of effective justice and social services for the communities where they operate, and as a result crime bosses themselves become a form of community leader.
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/trinidad-gang-leader-has-600-men-under-his-command
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Pregnant teen among four killed in gang warfare
By CMC - Thursday, August 15th, 2013.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad– A 16-year-old pregnant teenager was among four people killed during gang related activities in the capital on Wednesday, police confirmed.
They said that Rasheeda Gomez, was in an apartment with her boyfriend, Shondell Braithwaite, when gunmen burst into the room and shot them. Braithwaite escaped death, but was shot and wounded.
Police said that Gomez was the cousin of Nyam Antoine, 16, who was dragged from his grandmother’s apartment off Upper Duncan Street, badly beaten and then shot more than 15 times.
Police said the third murder victim, Shawn Lewis Jr, 17, a mechanic, was killed after two gunmen walked up to the teenager and shot him, while the fourth murder victim, Christopher Peters, 24, was driving his vehicle in the volatile Laventille area along the east-west corridor when he was shot by two gunmen. His body was found slumped behind the steering wheel of the car.
The murder toll so far this year stands at 240.
Police said they had also shot and killed two suspected care thieves during a high-speed chase in Chaguanas, in central Trinidad on Wednesday.
They said Kareem Stewart and Keron Guy were part of a gang of four suspected of stealing two vehicles on Tuesday night.
The police said the men who were spotted on Wednesday in one of the stolen vehicles fired upon them.
The authorities said that two of the men escaped but Stewart and Gyuy were taken to a health facility where they were pronounced dead. Police said they recovered two firearms[.]
http://www.antiguaobserver.com/pregnant-teen-among-four-killed-in-gang-warfare/
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VIOLENCE AFFECTS SYRIANS IN ANTIGUA
By OBSERVER media - Thursday, August 22nd, 2013.
As the violence in Syria escalates, more and more families living in Antigua & Barbuda are being affected by the ongoing violent conflict there, which the United Nations (UN) estimates has already claimed at least 100,000 lives. Businessman Issam Aji and his wife Hana Aji told OBSERVER media their family members have been
caught up in the conflict with homes destroyed and lives lost.
They said they felt obliged to speak out after claims of a major chemical weapons attack Wednesday in their homeland, which reportedly killed in excess of 1000 people.
The Syrian opposition accused the government of genocide, in what would be the most lethal chemical attack since the 1980s.
The couple said they have lost at least 10 family members and friends to the ongoing conflict. Hana said two of her uncles have been imprisoned.
Issam said his wife’s family lost their home and were forced to flee the country.
“Their house was destroyed, the whole building dropped level with the floor and then they emigrate from Syria to Lebanon and from Lebanon to Egypt.”
He noted too, It’s getting harder for Syrians in Antigua & Barbuda to send support to their families there.
“Everybody is sending support to their families in Syria, financial support, because you can’t get anything over there. But I don’t think you can send anymore because I think Western Union closed their offices.”
“When you send with Western Union the Syrian government thief off the money, and on the black market the US dollar is 300 Syrian, but when you send to Western Union you only get like 90,” Issam claimed.
Issam, who moved to Antigua in 1972 to escape compulsory military service, said so far there has not been any joint effort by the Syrian community in
Antigua. “Everybody is helping his own. Like I am helping my family and my wife’s family, but we never get together and help,” he declared.
According to UN estimates, around 2 million people have fled Syria since the conflict began.
Issam said it has not been possible for them to flee to Antigua because the airports in Syria have been closed.
He, however, said his family, with whom he keeps in constant contact, has remained in Syria because they have been able to escape most of the conflict in their rural dwelling.
“Because it’s a small village in the countryside they don’t have much effect, but all the people from the cities they already move to that village and a lot of Syrians have moved from cities to the villages because the conflict is in the big cities,” Issam said.
Hana, who moved to Antigua to marry Issam five years ago, said only since her family escaped the country has she been able to keep in regular contact.
“When they had the revolution they were afraid to be on the phone because it was being tapped.” “After that they tell mewhen they walk on the street a lot of people dead and they can’t do anything to help because they will get shot.”
On Wednesday, Syrian opposition activists claimed rockets with toxic agents were launched at the suburbs of the Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus, as part of a major bombardment of rebel forces.
The Syrian army said the accusations have been fabricated to cover up rebel losses.
Following an emergency meeting, The United Nations Security Council said it was necessary to clarify what happened in the alleged attack, but stopped
short of demanding an investigation by a UN team currently in Damascus.
http://www.antiguaobserver.com/violence-affects-syrians-in-antigua/
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The gangs of Trinidad and Tobago
Monday, March 18 2013
We are being told daily that many of our murders are gang related and that they are focussed in the Laventille areas. Hence we need more feet on the ground, we need to precept the army, to patrol this killing field.
What this approach suggests is that our gangs, besides the normal criminal activities to make money or in competition with each other in these activities, they are fighting among themselves. We are seeing an increasing number of people before the courts walking free because witnesses contract amnesia or they are killed before testifying. It appears that besides the violence they may indeed be threatening the security of the state.
The view of the government to date in their social solutions, exemplified by the Hoop of Hope and providing playing fields, is that these gangs are violent youth groups that deal in petty crime, localised drugs — that these gangs are unsophisticated, uneducated and are largely interested in controlling swaths of decaying urban areas that mark out their territories. We hear of killings, allegedly because some victim crossed a borderline. However, the recent literature is seeing the gang more as an organised crime group. Hence it is very important to understand how these gangs are organised and their funding resources.
The literature tells us that the policies of many governments besieged by gangs revolve around the power of law enforcement, in some cases, like in TT, putting the military on the streets to fight the gangs.
However there are few references to the social policies in this fight and even when they are found they focus on the reasons why individuals join gangs or what sort of family conditions produce these at risk youths. In TT our studies suggest that single family households, poverty are among the causes of gang formation.
However these studies focus on the causes of this gang culture and not the solutions apart from the inane — improving access to sporting facilities and the like.
More recent work on this gang culture takes a more holistic look at the problem and has begun to relate the activities of these gangs to cartels, organised crime and even terrorists groups. These studies tend to recommend as solutions political-military enforcement approaches based on country insurgency methods. Our current discussion in Parliament on the Defence Amendment Bill is a step in this direction.
However there is little discussion as to the evolution of these gangs into what could be a national security threat to our country.
The question before us is whether our gangs are anywhere near the level of sophistication we see in Mexico and pose such a threat to us or if they are heading there?
Our gangs are well equipped with weapons, use them discriminately and they are of such sophistication that suggests that the gangs are institutionalised. There is not enough information to tell us whether these gangs are independent cells that operate subject to a larger country or regional leadership on drugs,or whatever.
The island wide radar and the now cancelled OPVs suggest that at one time the government thought that our gangs were operating in collusion with a broader based leadership, had broader based goals. This is also the view held by Darius Figueiro that all of the tools of the trade utilised in gangland come from the drug trade and gangs are the spawn of that trade; hence the largest single threat to the Caribbean States is not the gangs but the drug trade-to deal with gangs the drug trade must be addressed.
http://www.newsday.co.tt/letters/0,175004.html
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Cops detain 24
Wednesday, August 21 2013
Twenty-four persons were held during a police exercise in the Northern Division on Monday. Among them were three persons who only moments before had robbed a Lotto booth in St Augustine, and four believed to be involved in a car larceny racket.
The exercise, spearheaded by Senior Supt David Abraham and included Sgt Vitus Hernandez, Sgt Rene Katwaroo and other officers of the division, began at about 10 am and ended at about 9 pm.
The officers first made their way to Wharf Trace, Maracas, St Joseph, where, acting on information received, searched a home. There the officers found four persons who were allegedly in the process of scrapping a silver Nissan Frontier vehicle.
The vehicle had been reported stolen one day earlier from the Cunupia district. The men held were said to be a 19-year-old from Wharf Trace, a 38-year-old from Fyzabad, and a 19-year-old and a 40-year-old from Enterprise. They are expected to be placed on ID parades. Investigators believe that the men may be responsible for a series of car robberies in the Northern and Central Divisions over the past few months.
Later, at about 8.15 pm, three Barataria men aged 21, 23 and 24, broke into the Lotto booth located near WE Bar along the Eastern Main Road, St Augustine, and made off with $3,413. The men boarded a maxi-taxi headed in a westerly direction on the Priority Bus Route.
However, the police were alerted within minutes and were able to intercept the maxi near the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope.
The three young men were held and are also expected to be placed under ID parades before being charged.
The police exercise also netted two men from the Malabar area who were arrested for being in possession of 200 grammes of marijuana at One Way Drive, Malabar.
The officers also recovered a home-made shotgun along Train Line Road, Malabar.
The other 15 persons were held on outstanding warrants.
The exercise was part of the division’s continuing “zero tolerance” policy against crime in its jurisdiction and is one of several which are expected to be done over the coming days.
http://www.newsday.co.tt/crime_and_court/0,182520.html
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Body identified
Tuesday, August 20 2013
THE decomposed body of a man found in a forested area at Guayaguayare on Saturday has been identified as Nizam Mohammed.
According to police reports about 8.15 am yesterday a man was catching crabs in the forested area of Rust Village, when he stumbled upon the body. Reports said that Mohammed, 58, was clad in a pair of black three-quarter pants and a striped T-shirt. Investigators believe the body may have been at the location for about three days.
A bottle believed to contain a poisonous substance was also found near the body. The area was cordoned off. Inspectors George, Jankie, Sgt Kistow, PC Sarabjit and other officers of the Eastern Division Task Force visited the scene. Mohammed’s body was identified by his sons at the Sangre Grande Mortuary.
Cpl Narvin Maharaj is continuing investigations.
http://www.newsday.co.tt/crime_and_court/0,182509.html
http://www.newsday.co.tt/crime_and_court/0,182509.html
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Man killed in hit-and-run
Monday, August 19 2013
A La Brea man was killed early Saturday morning in a hit-and-run accident minutes after returning home from attending a wake in his village.
Darius Dyer-Rigues, 33, of La Brea Village died on the spot when he was knocked down by a motor vehicle while walking along the Guayaguayare Main road a short distance from his home. According to police report the incident occurred about 5 am on Saturday near the “Chit Chat bar”.
The driver of the vehicle sped off after he struck Dyer-Rigues. Up to late yesterday police officers were searching for a male suspect said to be from the Guayaguayare area.
When Newsday visited the family on Saturday relatives were in a state of shock. Dyer-Rigues lived with his seven siblings and father Joseph Dyer, 69.
The elder Dyer told Newsday his son left home Friday evening to the attend a wake in the area.
“People around by the bar said they heard a loud bang. They saw my son lying on the road. With one hit I heard he was dead, ’Dyer said, adding an eyewitness said the suspect came out of his vehicle and looked at his son’s body and commented that he thought it was a rubbish bin he struck and not a man. “They (eyewitness) said the man then jumped back in his vehicle and drove off,” Dyer said.
Dyer’s brother Phill said when he saw his brother’s body on the road way tears came to his eyes. “I could not believe he was dead. His skull was crushed and his face was no more.
And there was blood. How could a man just bounce another man and leave him on the road and drive off. No, no, he has to answer my brother’s dead,” an emotional Phill said.
Dyer-Rigues was employed as a supervisor at a Transport and Maintenance company in Guayaguayare. He was described as a peaceful man and easy going. “He was the one to stop a quarrel and tell us leave it in God’s hands . He was very peaceful.” Phill said. An autopsy would be performed today at the Forensics Science Centre, St James. Cpl Samlal of the Mayaro Police Station is continuing investigations.
http://www.newsday.co.tt/crime_and_court/0,182448.html
http://www.newsday.co.tt/crime_and_court/0,182448.html
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Two killed in gang violence
Story Created: Jun 26, 2013 at 10:52 PM ECT
Story Updated: Jun 27, 2013 at 6:19 PM ECT
BETWEEN Tuesday afternoon and yesterday morning there were two murders in North Trinidad, which were both gang-related.
The first murder occurred at 3.45 p.m. on Tuesday.
Residents near Building Six in Maloney said they heard a volley of gunshots and saw the victim, Anthony Brown, 26, running from his attacker. But while trying to escape, Brown tripped and fell.
The gunman caught up to him and stood over him firing a shot to his chest at close range. The gunman then ran off.
Neighbours called Maloney police who arrived and took Brown to Arima District Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Officers from the Homicide Bureau later visited the scene where they conducted enquiries. Police said that Brown had several robbery and shooting matters pending in the Arima and Tunapuna courts.
The second murder occurred in Laventille at 12.45 a.m.
Police said the victim, Kadar Marvin Weston, 30, was standing on the sidewalk near to a bar in Snake Valley, Laventille, when a white car stopped near him. One of its occupants got out and opened fire on Weston, hitting him twice to his chest.
Residents who heard the gunshots called the police, who took him to Port of Spain General Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Homicide Bureau officers later visited the scene where they conducted enquiries.
Police said the murder was gang--related.
The murder toll stood at 183 up to last night, according to an Express count.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Two-killed-in-gang-violence-213250311.html
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Two-killed-in-gang-violence-213250311.html
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Violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago has risen dramatically in the last decade, with homicides climbing from a rate of 9.3 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2000, to 35.2 per 100,000 in 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
In August 2011, the government declared a temporary “state of emergency” due to concerns about rising drug related violence, granting police the power to make arrests without charges and conduct searches without warrants. It also imposed a 70-day nighttime curfew on residents, who faced fines or arrests if caught on the streets between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.
Despite the rise over the last decade, homicide rates have actually experienced a continued downward trend in recent years after peaking at 41.1 per 100,000 in 2008.
From: Trinidad Security Minister Declares Ban on Crime Statistics
Thursday, 11 October 2012
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/security-minister-ban-crime-statistics-trinidad-tobago
[reference: sensationalizing]
In : Original story post and English
Tags: trinidad and tobago gangs gang violence violence crime
