Alexander warns of emerging gang conflict in Morvant

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

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Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has re­vealed that law en­force­ment agen­cies are prepar­ing a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse to an emerg­ing gang con­flict in Mor­vant, warn­ing that a group of young men have re­ject­ed on­go­ing peace ef­forts and are fu­elling vi­o­lence in the area.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said au­thor­i­ties were close­ly mon­i­tor­ing what he de­scribed as a “gang-type sit­u­a­tion” with­in the Mor­vant polic­ing dis­trict in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion.

“There is present­ly a gang-type sit­u­a­tion ex­ist­ing in the Mor­vant polic­ing dis­trict or the North East­ern Di­vi­sion where the po­lice has ex­pressed con­cerns about per­sons who call them­selves ‘Fishie’, ‘Son Son’, ‘Joe’ and ‘Tiny’, who have no val­ue for hu­man life as they have de­cid­ed not to be part of the peace. Some of these young men have de­cid­ed to par­tic­i­pate in what they are claim­ing to be war,” Alexan­der said.

He dis­closed that po­lice and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies were prepar­ing a tar­get­ed op­er­a­tion, adding that im­ages of those be­lieved to be in­volved, along with their as­so­ciates, would be re­leased pub­licly in an ef­fort to lo­cate them.

“The var­i­ous polic­ing agen­cies and non-po­lice agen­cies will be briefed, and their pic­tures and those of their as­so­ciates will be placed in the pub­lic do­main in a bid to lo­cate them and the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tions tak­en.”

Alexan­der said res­i­dents should not have to live in fear be­cause of the ac­tions of a small num­ber of vi­o­lent of­fend­ers.

“The pub­lic must not be afraid to walk and func­tion in ar­eas where they were born and grew be­cause of the be­hav­iour of a few who have no re­spect for law and or­der. Our friends and al­lies have vol­un­teered to as­sist.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that law en­force­ment con­tin­ues to make gains against vi­o­lent crime, the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said polic­ing ef­forts must con­tin­ue to in­ten­si­fy de­spite en­cour­ag­ing na­tion­al sta­tis­tics.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready spo­ken as it re­lates to the is­sue of crime and yes, whilst some sig­nif­i­cant gains have been made as it re­lates to the crime trends, more has to be done both from the front­lines and the TTPS, who con­tin­ues to do a re­mark­able job along­side oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies.”

Alexan­der al­so ac­knowl­edged on­go­ing pub­lic con­cerns over po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty and re­sponse times in some com­mu­ni­ties.

His com­ments fol­lowed a so­cial me­dia post by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Tues­day high­light­ing po­lice da­ta show­ing there were 118 few­er mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and Ju­ly 20, 2026, than dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2024, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s last full year in of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, mur­ders fell from 331 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od in 2024 to 213 in 2026, while Gov­ern­ment analy­sis es­ti­mat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 few­er mur­ders had been com­mit­ted dur­ing 2025 and 2026 com­bined than would have been pro­ject­ed based on the mur­der rates record­ed in 2023 and 2024.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said every po­lice di­vi­sion record­ed de­clines in mur­ders, ar­gu­ing that the fig­ures demon­strat­ed the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy and the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad de­scribed the de­cline in mur­ders as “mas­sive”, say­ing it was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly ap­pro­pri­ate to con­clude that rough­ly 400 lives had been saved through the re­duc­tion in homi­cides.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Seep­er­sad said cal­cu­lat­ing lives saved based on re­duced mur­der fig­ures is a stan­dard method used in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to eval­u­ate the im­pact of crime in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies.

He added that whether the da­ta are com­pared year-on-year or be­tween pe­ri­ods with and with­out a State of Emer­gency, the trend re­mains clear, with sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions not on­ly in mur­ders but al­so in oth­er vi­o­lent crimes.

How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad cau­tioned that while States of Emer­gency are ef­fec­tive in sup­press­ing vi­o­lent crime, they are not per­ma­nent so­lu­tions.

He said emer­gency pow­ers should re­main avail­able un­til longer-term in­ter­ven­tions ad­dress­ing both the im­me­di­ate dri­vers of vi­o­lence, such as gang ri­val­ries, and deep­er so­cial fac­tors with­in fam­i­lies, schools and com­mu­ni­ties be­come ful­ly es­tab­lished.

Seep­er­sad not­ed that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s pol­i­cy and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port di­vi­sion, head­ed by Za­heer Ali, is al­ready de­vel­op­ing in­ter­ven­tions tar­get­ing both the short-term and long-term caus­es of vi­o­lent crime.

“The re­al­i­ty is that a State of Emer­gency saves lives and re­duces crime. Un­til we can re­al­ly ful­ly put oth­er mea­sures in place, it cer­tain­ly is an op­tion that should stay on the ta­ble for con­sid­er­a­tion,” he said.