Crime of Unbelonging
“The images of the rioting out of East Port of-Spain last Monday could have been from a war zone, with residents blocking the streets with debris, throwing stones, burning garbage and tires.
But fast on the heels of the bloodiest January in the history of T&T with 61 murders and ISIS terror plots, the nation is jittery. A 2012 United Nations Development Report titled ‘Gangs are the new law in urban T&T’ identified over 100 criminal gangs across T&T. In East Port-of-Spain alone there must be some 40 gangs. Gang leaders controlling street blocks are in charge. They are miniature states within the State. Since the State has failed to protect the residents they take a position of accommodation with gang members.” (Sunday, Feb 25, 2018—Ira Mathur’s SG column) I wrote that, in this space, one year back. Then there were hints and allegations for suspected financial inducement for young armed boys to join gangs but weren’t quite sure of the source.
The chilling answer: The State.
On Feb 16, 2019, a year later, Guardian journalist Renuka Singh wrote in the Trinidad Guardian that a 17-page document written by the Police Commissioner, then minister of national security, Gary Griffith has surfaced ‘tracing gang members affiliations to companies which have received multimillion-dollar State contracts’.
Frighteningly, the “top secret National Security document” identified several men who benefited from Government contracts who were just last week arrested during an “antigang” sweep.
The State has unwittingly fed the highest murder rates in a non-warring country, but also terrifyingly created a fertile ground in Trinidad who had until recently, amongst the highest recruits for ISIS in the Western Hemisphere. Bring a dangerously high influx of arms and drugs into the country into the mix and this tiny dot of a country is a live explosive.
What to do? This is what I asked Elizabeth Solomon, a former colleague with whom I worked in the days of Radio 610, who went on to have a career in the UN in conflict prevention and peace-building in post-conflict countries as far-flung as Bosnia. Her current company, Dialogue Solutions Limited provides dispute resolution in the commercial and public sectors.
Solomon said, “We keep trying to fix crime but it’s only a symptom. The real problem is that gangs feed on people’s sense of not belonging. The gangs are coalesced round a sense of being in the fringe of society. Young boys join gangs because it’s deeply tied in to their real or perceived sense of being marginalized from mainstream society. They buy the narrative that they will never make it, that they are poor and on the outskirts of society. Gang leaders fill the gap, give them an identity, help them to belong.”
The trouble is that the “internal structure of the gang thrives in a hierarchy defined by violence of ‘who is more violent than whom’, with the top spot belonging to those who are the most violent”.
Who is being recruited by gangs? What creates dispossessed young boys? Solomon said the reasons are varied, structural, built into our society. “The deeply flawed education system, with dropouts at a young age, boys who can only communicate in the language of violence, is part of it.
“We must solve the culture of violence outside the realm of everyday crime. For so many people to have joined ISIS in Trinidad speaks of a pervasive environment of violence and marginalisation that we are not addressing.
We are experiencing non-conventional conflict in Trinidad. We live in a highly violent society. Guns are part of our identity and in abundance.”
Violence confers power on gang members, boys, and men who otherwise feel powerless, without agency. We need to change that mindset. Solomon says “the more we respond to gangs as being on the fringe of society, the more it feeds their internal energy and reinforces the value of the gang members”. Calling it a “complex problem requiring a multi-faceted response”.
Solomon adds that we “must prioritise violence prevention with a disarmament and reintegration programme, a corrective education and public health policy”.
2018 ended with 516 murders, making it the second deadliest year in the history of T&T.
If the past is the best predictor of the future we are in trouble. It’s getting worse; the explosive ticking, but the question remains whether violence-weary citizens can summon the will, wipe off the dust in our faces to demand a sustainable solution to a problem that is sullied by the State, and in danger of blowing up in our faces.