No intelligence of gang alliance, law enforcement sources say

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Law en­force­ment sources say that while the po­lice are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing any in­crease in gang ac­tiv­i­ty and vi­o­lent at­tacks, there has been no in­tel­li­gence to sug­gest that crim­i­nal fac­tions have agreed to a truce or are unit­ing in a bid to tar­get the au­thor­i­ties.

The con­cerns were raised fol­low­ing a video on so­cial me­dia which showed a demon­stra­tor at a protest in sup­port of Ka­ia Sealy, claim­ing that var­i­ous gangs had agreed to a cease­fire.

“We now sign peace with Sixx, Sev­en, Eight, Nine... peace right now.

“This peace sign­ing right now with Mus­lim City, Ras­ta City, be­cause we un­der­stand­ing the sys­tem us­ing a di­vide and rule,” the man said.

The video was shared by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who de­nounced the sug­ges­tion of gangs unit­ing, de­scrib­ing it as “ap­palling,” as she ex­tend­ed her sup­port to the TTPS to se­cure staff at the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) on Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, dur­ing a demon­stra­tion last Wednes­day.

How­ev­er, one source says that while the video may be in­tend­ed as a “call to arms” for the gangs, there was no cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence to sup­port that ef­forts were un­der­way to form al­liances be­tween war­ring un­der­world cliques.

“The pos­si­bil­i­ty of that hap­pen­ing is very low due to the long-stand­ing his­to­ry of vi­o­lence among the gangs.

“It has cooled some­what re­cent­ly, be­cause if you re­call, the Sixx and Sev­en gangs were at each oth­er’s throats some years ago, but due to promi­nent mem­bers and lead­ers be­ing afraid of be­ing de­tained on Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), they aren’t tak­ing the chance to do any grand acts of vi­o­lence.”

The source ad­mit­ted that while there may be a “gap in in­tel­li­gence,” the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such an al­liance was still un­like­ly, re­fer­ring to the mur­der of Christo­pher Samp­son, alias ‘Bri­an’, in Sea Lots ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the mo­tive of which was de­scribed by po­lice as be­ing “gang-re­lat­ed.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Beetham Gar­dens and spoke with one res­i­dent who dis­missed the sug­ges­tion of gangs unit­ing as “old talk,” as he did not be­lieve that any such truce was be­ing called.

The man, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied for fear of be­ing tar­get­ed by the po­lice, said he be­lieved the re­marks were de­lib­er­ate­ly be­ing ex­ag­ger­at­ed by gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to jus­ti­fy more in­tense crack­downs in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties.

“I saw the video they are talk­ing about, and I feel like that is non­sense, there are peo­ple out here who lose fam­i­ly and friends and all kin­da thing, no­body go­ing out there to put up them­selves and end up in trou­ble or worse just be­cause of some protest.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Denise said while Beetham res­i­dents were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive of the protests, many were not will­ing to come for­ward and protest be­cause they did not see it as a pri­or­i­ty.

“Peo­ple right now study­ing to sur­vive. We not go­ing and be do­ing all that march­ing and up and down just to end up the same way we start.

“They study­ing to make mon­ey cause just now school go­ing and close and we have to have mon­ey for when our chil­dren home.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so vis­it­ed Pro­duc­tion Dri­ve, Sea Lots yes­ter­day, where one man who de­scribed him­self as a “life­long res­i­dent” rub­bished the claims of a gang al­liance.

“They (gangs) shoot­ing peo­ple like wind, and they think they will work to­geth­er?

“They need to check their sources and come again. Right now Sea Lots is calm and a lot of peo­ple hate to see that.”