Anti gang legislation goes back to Parliament

“Anti-gang legislation will come to the table as soon as next week,” he told a news conference at the Ministry of National Security’s headquarters, Temple Court, Port-of-Spain.

The news conference, attended by National Security Minister Edmund Dillon and Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams, addressed the recent spate of murders which have plagued Enterprise, central Trinidad, and more recently, Le Platte Village, Maraval and Bagatelle, Diego Martin.

Le Platte and Bagatelle recorded five killings within the last 36 hours.

The briefing preceded a visit by Dillon, Williams and Chief of Defence Staff Rodney Smart to the troubled Enterprise community.

Noting the Opposition’s lack of support for the anti-gang bill, on its last appearance in the Parliament - as well as other key pieces of anti-crime legislation - Al-Rawi urged them to support the legislation as the Government moves to comprehensively tackle gang activity, which is believed to have fuelled the murders in the districts.

“We are going to be laying in the Parliament the anti-gang bill in its exact form as it was expired,” he said. “We are also going to seek bail amendments that are required to facilitate the holding of persons for up to 120 days.

We are going to ask the Opposition to reverse their position on not supporting this because it is a matter of fact that several persons who have been murdered recently - one in side of the yard of a police station, one allegedly in the last few days - were persons who were released out from custody in circumstances where they could not be held for extended periods because of the collapse of the bail amendments and anti- gang legislation.

“These will be two additional pieces of work which will run alongside the very serious amendments that are going right now on our criminal justice system because we are convinced that until there is a consequence, in terms of a criminal sanction from a court, that you cannot really take management of crime seriously.” Al-Rawi lamented the killings in Le Platte.

“Last night, the country witnessed in Le Platte, innocent bystanders caught in what appears to be machine gunfire where the allegation is that a well-known criminal was targeted and executed and that so indiscriminate was the action that it didn’t matter to anyone who was carrying out that crime that innocent bystanders would be caught,” he said.

“As a Government, we warned and we have said in the Parliament that it only takes one person with a machine gun to change your murder statistics in a horrible way overnight.” The AG said there was an “obvious correlation between the amount of interdiction that you do with drugs and the effect it is going to have on those who are deprived of the profit of their trade.” “Somebody in Trinidad and Tobago lost $837 million worth of the product when 4.3 tonnes of cocaine was interdicted. Somebody in T&T lost money when marijuana was interdicted,” he said.

Al-Rawi said a social media war was taking place between alleged Unuly Isis members and Rasta City.

“The media is hot with videos of persons purporting to be gang members, labelled, packaged with accompanying music and yet when we went to the Parliament to carry on the extension of the anti-gang legislation, we were told by the Opposition that Trinidad and Tobago does not really need this because we have no empirical proof that this is required,” he said.

“We have heard some people describe legislative proposals as legislative babble, as being short-sighted but no one can point out with any sincerity to what aspect of the legislation is offensive.

No one can point out with any sincerity that there will be an acceleration in the criminal justice system by the removal of preliminary inquiries, by the potential to elect a judge only trial by the sue of plea bargaining.” Al-Rawi said the Criminal Proceedings Rules will “come alive” on April 18