Deadly gunplay

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Twelve hours af­ter a triple mur­der in Laven­tille sent shock­waves across the coun­try, gun­fire erupt­ed in Siparia on Sat­ur­day night, leav­ing two men dead and res­i­dents fear­ful.

The bod­ies of Kwame Par­ris, 29, alias “Six,” of Co­conut Al­ley, Siparia and Teshawn Bap­tiste, 25, al­so known as “Black­boy,” of Lowkie Trace, Pe­nal, were dis­cov­ered in Sen­non Vil­lage af­ter res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing loud ex­plo­sions around 9 pm. The pair were lim­ing by a house when the gun­shots rang out. Both men ran, but Par­ris did not get far. He was found ly­ing face down near the bath­room area of the house, bleed­ing from gun­shot wounds. Bap­tiste was chased as he ran through the com­mu­ni­ty, but even­tu­al­ly col­lapsed near a drain along Rail­way Road.

Po­lice re­cov­ered more than 25 spent 9mm and 5.56mm cas­ings, along with sev­er­al rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, from the scene.

The lat­est killings have brought re­newed con­cern over es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence in Siparia, which falls with­in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­stituen­cy.

In the past sev­en weeks, at least eight peo­ple have been mur­dered in the con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing six in the Siparia dis­trict. The dou­ble mur­der over the week­end has pushed the mur­der toll to ten.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Sen­non Vil­lage yes­ter­day, res­i­dents lament­ed that their once qui­et com­mu­ni­ty had be­come a fright­en­ing place to live.

Com­plain­ing that crime had in­creased in the com­mu­ni­ty over the past two years, he said, “The po­lice re­al­ly need to be more ef­fec­tive. I think the prob­lem with the po­lice; they don’t have the tools to in­ves­ti­gate prop­er­ly.”

One woman re­called that when the gun­shots rang out, her two grand­chil­dren dropped to the ground. She said they were left so trau­ma­tised that she sent them to stay with their moth­er.

“It not nice. We vil­lage used to be a qui­et vil­lage and these crim­i­nal el­e­ments mov­ing in­to our vil­lage,” she com­plained.

An­oth­er res­i­dent be­lieves the mur­ders were gang-re­lat­ed.

“I’m telling them they’re lit­er­al­ly tar­get­ing peo­ple, you know, so I re­al­ly don’t want to be in any mix-up. It’s fright­en­ing,” he said.

He said his chil­dren were at home when the mur­ders oc­curred.

“All they could do is lie down on the ground,” he said.

Boast­ing that Siparia has a wealth of tal­ent and cul­tur­al re­sources, Aki­no­la Sen­non, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Siparia Del­tones In­sti­tute and Steel­band arranger, said gun vi­o­lence in­fil­trat­ing the com­mu­ni­ty is sad, but be­lieves those re­spon­si­ble rep­re­sent a mi­nor­i­ty.

“I think we need to bind to­geth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty; we need to pray a lot so that, you know, it doesn’t be­come a cul­tur­al norm.”

En­cour­ag­ing young peo­ple to de­vel­op self-aware­ness and find pur­pose, he called for stronger men­tor­ship pro­grammes, say­ing the in­for­mal guid­ance that ex­ist­ed in pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions no longer ex­ists.

Mean­while, Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo ex­pressed con­cern over the re­cent in­crease in mur­ders in Siparia and ap­pealed to those in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty to turn to God.

“You want a com­mu­ni­ty to be peace­ful, you want peo­ple to go about their busi­ness in com­fort, not walk­ing around in fear that some­thing may hap­pen to any­body at any time, any mem­ber of their fam­i­ly them­selves. So, I’m call­ing on those per­sons who are re­spon­si­ble for com­mit­ting these crimes to re­think their po­si­tion.”

Mayrhoo said he is dis­ap­point­ed that Siparia has be­come a crime hotspot in re­cent weeks and will be seek­ing a meet­ing with se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers in the South West­ern Di­vi­sion to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion.

Mean­while, two Op­po­si­tion mem­bers re­it­er­at­ed that the State of Emer­gency (SoE) has proven in­ef­fec­tive as mass shoot­ings and mur­ders con­tin­ue.

Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les said there has been no new in­for­ma­tion from the TTPS and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Min­is­ter of De­fence, while cit­i­zens are left to fend for them­selves.

“The SoE is now be­ing weaponised against the law-abid­ing by a Gov­ern­ment that is more fo­cused on set­tling po­lit­i­cal scores with its op­po­nents. The Prime Min­is­ter is qui­et and pre­tends as though we don’t have a cri­sis. The cur­rent state of play is that the Gov­ern­ment has sur­ren­dered in the fight against crime and now us­es the emer­gency pow­ers against those they per­ceive to be their po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Port-of-Spain North/ St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young said that the broad day­light triple mur­der at a gas sta­tion in Laven­tille shows that crim­i­nals are not de­terred by the SoE.

He said the coun­try still does not know the Gov­ern­ment’s crime plan. “Like every law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, I am be­yond con­cerned about the state of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­clud­ing crime, the econ­o­my, the lack of trans­paren­cy, the de­struc­tion of our en­er­gy sec­tor and the in­ten­tion­al and tar­get­ed po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion that is tak­ing place,” he said.

Mean­while, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah said the po­lice ser­vice needs to fo­cus im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion on in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing.

He said a com­pre­hen­sive in­tel­li­gence deep dive with­in the na­tion’s prison sys­tem is equal­ly im­por­tant as there is grow­ing ev­i­dence re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that in­car­cer­at­ed gang lead­ers con­tin­ue to or­ches­trate mur­ders and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes from be­hind prison walls.

Call­ing for an “all hands on deck” ap­proach, he said, “The fight against homi­cide al­so re­quires stronger in­te­gra­tion be­tween in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, in­ves­ti­ga­tions, foren­sic sci­ence, dig­i­tal ev­i­dence re­cov­ery and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al sup­port.

Adding that no sin­gle agency can solve the homi­cide prob­lem in iso­la­tion, he ad­vised, “Law en­force­ment, the Prison Ser­vice, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, foren­sic spe­cial­ists, com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and so­cial in­ter­ven­tion agen­cies, even the faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, must op­er­ate with­in a co­or­di­nat­ed na­tion­al frame­work. In­tel­li­gence shar­ing, joint op­er­a­tions and uni­fied com­mand struc­tures will be crit­i­cal to achiev­ing sus­tained re­duc­tions in vi­o­lent crime.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der for a com­ment but did not get a re­sponse un­til the time of pub­li­ca­tion.