STOP THE CRIMINALS NOW!

What happened on Thursday, a tacit return of open gang warfare to the streets of downtown Port-of-Spain for the first time since the middle 1960s, must be stopped by the Police before it escalates. In the process innocent bystanders, as with the case of 21-year old public servant, Lystra Wright, on Thursday, are in danger of being shot by stray bullets, as well as the country’s image being hurt and negative signals being sent to the very young.

The reported shooting incident on the Brian Lara Promenade in the heart of Port-of-Spain’s financial district has sent the uncomfortable signal that no one will be able to consider himself “100 per cent” safe in any area of Port-of-Spain, downtown or otherwise, until the Protective Services retake the capital city from the growing army of criminals, who appear insensitive to the concerns of the majority. What is disturbing is that in addition to the varying levels of criminal activity and the seeming ability of gangsters to carry out at will what the Police describe as gang related and drug related murders, is the disregard for the Police by some residents of North, Central and South Trinidad, who block roads and burn tyres in open defiance of the law.

In other instances protests are mounted by people demanding jobs, causing immense social dislocation. The disregard for authority is not limited to adults, but has been taken into the country’s classrooms by schoolchildren, who, in apparently micmicking lawless grownups and wayward teenagers, indulge in antisocial behaviour, including fighting among themselves, assaulting school teachers, selling and/or using illegal drugs, physically molesting fellow students, and going to classes armed, not with school books, but with knives and in some extreme cases, guns.

We are returning  to the wild days of the 1950s and 1960s, when rival city gangs fought with bottles, stones and cutlasses and chased each other through the streets. The difference is that today’s badjohns are using guns. Some forty years ago members of some steelbands and their followers clashed with rival bands because of misguided rivalry. Today’s badjohns are warring, reportedly, over which group has the “right” to control the selling of illegal drugs in particular areas or determining who will work on URP projects or who will command and profit from the setting up of URP ghost gangs.

The Government, rather than reacting with an anti-crime plan every other morning, must find ways to infiltrate gangs. This would assist in stemming the flow of drugs and in preventing many of the drug related and gang related murders in the country today, along with many other serious crimes. But something has to be done. The misguided few throughout Trinidad and Tobago, who appear bent on holding the country to ransom seemingly are unconcerned about the negative effect of their actions on this country. For example, Thursday’s reported incident took place even as Trinidad and Tobago is making a bid to be the headquarters of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and a few hundred metres from the area where the FTAA Secretariat is likely to be sited. It is time to reclaim the country and its good image from the lawbreakers and their criminally stupid actions.