Morvant residents fear gang war; call for youth intervention

Shane Su­perville and

Jensen La Vende

Res­i­dents in dif­fer­ent neigh­bour­hoods in Mor­vant say the preva­lence of vi­o­lent crime, cou­pled with fears of an im­pend­ing gang war, has placed them on alert.

How­ev­er, rather than sim­ply call­ing for more ro­bust polic­ing, they are urg­ing au­thor­i­ties to in­tro­duce com­mu­ni­ty-based so­cial in­ter­ven­tions to dis­cour­age young peo­ple from turn­ing to crime. They are al­so ap­peal­ing to war­ring fac­tions to end the blood­shed.

Last week, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der con­firmed that law en­force­ment was mon­i­tor­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty in Mor­vant, nam­ing sev­er­al peo­ple whom he de­scribed as hav­ing no re­gard for hu­man life.

On Ju­ly 18, three men — Khalil Williams, 22, Mikal “Bee­bo” Camp­bell, 29, and 50-year-old Selvon Jack — were killed at a Unipet gas sta­tion at the cor­ner of the East­ern Main Road and Mor­vant Old Road.

Days lat­er, a man iden­ti­fied as Frankie Bartholomew, alias “Fishie”, was shot and wound­ed in Mor­vant on Thurs­day.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Chi­napoo, Mor­vant, last Thurs­day, Ashan­na La Rosa, a kinder­garten teacher and vice pres­i­dent of the Chi­napoo Com­mu­ni­ty Im­pact Cen­tre, said the vi­o­lence was a re­al­i­ty for many fam­i­lies.

“It’s ac­tu­al­ly scary in truth to know that there are so many ba­bies around and then you’re los­ing your dad­dies a lot, be­cause one of our preschool­ers lost their fa­ther just a few days ago.

“It’s very heavy on the heart, but we still try to do a lit­tle love to­geth­er. If we see each oth­er and look out for each oth­er, that would be bet­ter.

“If we come to­geth­er as an open heart, an open mind, we will do much bet­ter.”

La Rosa said ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing sum­mer camps and events through the com­mu­ni­ty coun­cil, were be­ing rolled out dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust pe­ri­od to cater to young chil­dren and im­prove com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

Re­fer­ring to the grief caused by “tit-for-tat” vi­o­lence be­tween war­ring gangs, La Rosa urged those in­volved to con­sid­er the dam­age be­ing in­flict­ed on fam­i­lies and chal­lenged them to think about whether they would want the same pain brought up­on them­selves.

“Why would you go to hurt some­one else to make them feel the pain that you’re feel­ing?”

She sug­gest­ed that au­thor­i­ties de­ploy so­cial work­ers and com­mu­ni­ty of­fi­cials to fo­cus on “hotspot” ar­eas and show gen­uine care to peo­ple who need as­sis­tance.

“Some­times there may be some­one who just needs that ex­tra mo­ti­va­tion to get up and go to that job in­ter­view. A sim­ple ges­ture as show­ing up and en­cour­ag­ing that per­son, can go a long way.”

Mean­while, in Mon Re­pos, Mor­vant, one res­i­dent who asked not to be named for his safe­ty, said he has lived in the area for 40 years and lament­ed the fre­quen­cy of vi­o­lent crime, not­ing that mur­ders and wound­ings had be­come re­cur­ring prob­lems for res­i­dents.

“I have seen gen­er­a­tions of killings. It didn’t just start to­day, and it didn’t start last week.

“We talk­ing about the ear­ly 2000s, be­tween vil­lages, then it went to gangs with num­bers, and now it’s just an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion of killing go­ing on again.”

The man said the vi­o­lence was part­ly due to an ero­sion of the sense of com­mu­ni­ty, with many young peo­ple feel­ing iso­lat­ed and hav­ing lim­it­ed pro­duc­tive out­lets for their time and en­er­gy.

He said prop­er so­cial sup­port from the State could help bring peace be­tween com­mu­ni­ties.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Chris­t­ian Birch­wood agreed that more con­cert­ed ef­forts were need­ed to make crim­i­nal­i­ty less ap­peal­ing to young peo­ple.

Re­fer­ring to the sus­pen­sion of the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme, Birch­wood raised con­cerns that if a struc­tured ini­tia­tive for at-risk youths out­side of for­mal ed­u­ca­tion was not in­tro­duced, se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges could con­tin­ue.

“We need to un­der­stand that we need op­por­tu­ni­ties. The pow­ers that be need to un­der­stand that the young peo­ple in the coun­try need op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue liv­ing their lives.

“Young peo­ple need op­por­tu­ni­ties. We un­der­stand that not every young per­son is in­clined to learn­ing or in­clined to de­vel­op­ing them­selves through Uni­ver­si­ties.

“This is a Trinidad and To­ba­go is­sue, and it must be ad­dressed as such.”

Birch­wood al­so called on young men di­rect­ly in­volved in crime to “put down their weapons,” say­ing it was not worth it, while lament­ing that con­cerns over gang vi­o­lence per­sist­ed even with a State of Emer­gency (SoE) in ef­fect.