Ex-gang members: ‘Spare the innocents’

GANG activity in Trinidad and Tobago is pushing the murder toll to record highs every year.

For some, gangs determine where they go and what they wear.

Gang culture has found its way into the music the youths listen to.

Meanwhile, we all live in fear that we could be the next victim or casualty of gang activity.

This new Newsday series will examine the culture behind gangs and what we can do to save our youths and nation.

What draws our youths to gang life? How far does its reach extend, both behind bars and on the outside?

And what are the authorities, schools, psychologists and religious leaders doing to combat gangs and their influence on our youths?

IN Damian “Jr Gong” Marley’s 2014 hit Is It Worth It, he challenges gunmen about the value of their actions, questioning whether the harm and suffering caused are truly worth any perceived advancement in life.

He sings, “Tell me, is it worth it all if one don rise then a next must fall…if one child smile while a next one bawl (cry)?”

Many in TT ask these questions daily as escalating gang violence and related murders weigh heavily on their minds.

Names such as Sixx/6ixx, Seven, Eight and Nine echo throughout the country as gang violence has evolved into a literal numbers game.

THE STATISTICS

Newsday requested statistics from the police service’s Crime and Problem Analysis Branch on gang-related murders between 2000 and 2023, separated by gender and district/division.

All gang-related murders for that period totalled to 3,253 – 104 women and 3,149 men.

The largest figure, 1,172, came from the Port of Spain division. No other division surpassed 600 murders.

The Northern Division followed with 570; Western with 555; North Eastern with 502; Central had 156; and Southern had 92. The Eastern Division had 84 murders, while the North Central division had 82, South Western had 22 and Tobago, 18.

The North Central Division was only created in 2022 as a result of the Northern Division being split in two.

There were significant falls in such crimes, as well as rises, throughout the period.

For instance, the total jumped from 55 in 2004 to 101 in 2005 and then 158 in 2006. However, it dropped from 155 in 2009 to 75 in 2010.

After this, the other major jump happened when the total moved from 163 in 2021 to 244 in 2022. It then went on to increase to 261 in 2023.

Tobago’s figure for gang-related murders varied between one and zero until 2019, when there were two, then three in 2022. Then in 2023, the total was eight.

FORMER GANG MEMBERS SPEAK

“Motives were different back then.”

This was the consensus among three former gang members whose prime was in the 1980s.

They believe what gangs stood for has changed drastically throughout the years, and has now reached a destructive state.

To protect their identities, the men will be referred to as locations: Boot Hill, Morvant and Maloney.

Boot Hill told Newsday he grew up with an absent father and an abusive stepfather. In hindsight, he said, it was this environment which led him to begin turning to what he called “extreme violence.

“Every day (when) I left my home, I left in pain. So when I was out there in pain and people interfere with me, dem have to feel that pain, too. That pain had to transfer to somebody.”

He said this was when he became involved in “that kind of life,” alluding to gang life.

But he said back then, it was in no way similar to now, when gang members kill innocent people, the elderly, children, women, and “every single person that wrongs them.” He also said his circle did not condone sexual assault, rape and robbery.

“I still believe it have people who deserve to get killed…(If) somebody come to (sexually) abuse (a woman), I have no problem dealing with that.

“I not going to rob a house, snatch purses or snatch bags.”

He finished secondary school at 16 and joined the Cub Scouts, later advancing to the Cadet Force.

After this, he said he joined the Jamaat al Muslimeen, as it seemed to care about helping young black men succeed, and he was thrilled.

“It was study, pray, train…But I was a classified marksman – first class – and the men there said, ‘You have to help we out, inno. We know you could do thing.’”

He went on to play a key role in the Say No To Drugs campaign in Cocorite, Diego Martin and Carenage.

“Our duty was to shut down drug blocks, take the drugs and give it to another member to destroy it.” He said retaliation was not common for people who just sold marijuana, but when cocaine became a major seller, “Everybody wanted to protect themselves and their products.

“I would come out and shoot a man, then talk. (I would say), ‘Show me where the guns, drugs and money is (sic).’

“Kill me dead, I was doing the right thing. I was getting this poison off the streets.”

On his first time “ending a man,” he said his adrenaline was pumping.

“With the crowd, everything was easy…When you do something often enough, it becomes commonplace.”

He then recalled a moment that continues to haunt him to this day, when he began questioning if he was really “doing good” or not.

“During a bust, I was seeing somebody with fire (to) their face. When I reach, I see a ten-year-old boy. His hands were black. He told me, ‘My father is a spranger, my mother is a spranger. Since I was a baby, they would give me milk, things, nothing would make me stop crying. So they had to give me this, and it worked.’” That disturbing moment helped reaffirm he was doing the country a service by getting rid of drugs.

However, in a shocking twist, he added, “Only to find out the man we were giving the drugs to destroy was the pusher (supplier) in the back there.

“I couldn’t talk (about it). I knew they would kill me.

“I hated myself so much after that that I and all began using the drug…People thought I was doing it to get high, but I used it to escape my reality and save people.”

He also recalled being wrongly charged and jailed on remand for murder. He was never convicted and the case has since been dismissed. He spent three years in jail.

“The police would always say bring information to them and trust them, but don’t believe anything the police say. They are not for us. They are an arm of the State.”

On his arrest, he said, the police officer told him he knew the killer was not him and the police would take his statement as a witness as opposed to a suspect. The officer then vowed to get the “real killer.”

“The same police came back a few minutes later and said, ‘I want to formally charge you with murder.’

“All dem little boys now who talking about the system wicked – most people might not believe it, but you have to see it and experience it to really understand.”

On his experience in jail, he said, “They breaking you physically, because it’s old food…really old food. They breaking you even more, mentally, because if you is a big 40-year-old and you ain’t call a little 18-year-old ‘mister,’ you could get your hands broken, skull fractured, you could even die and nobody getting charged for it.”

Years after his release, the charging officer, who was on pre-retirement leave, saw him in public and approached him. The officer said, “Boy, we know you were innocent, but I was instructed to charge you.”

It was the last thing he wanted to hear, after being denied several job opportunities for serving time.

Morvant, another former gang member, said while both parents were present in his life as a child, his father had “serious anger issues.”

And growing up with older brothers, he said he learnt how to fight owing to constant roughhousing.

“Then, on my own, I saw certain things, mixed with certain fellas and moved with the boys and from time to time, incidents may occur and we might get opposition.”

He, too, was in the Cadet Force and subsequently joined the TT Defence Force before dropping out.

He said his attacks, whether using his fists, a cutlass or a gun, were extremely calculated.

“I had a lot of rage and I realise anything I put my hands on, I could use it (to hurt someone).

“I did a lot of things I’m not proud of. I rob, I shoot, I real jump…But it wasn’t about gang wars. It could be that there are friends one, two and three, and three might go somewhere to take a seabath with his family and some fellas could interfere with him and he will come back and tell we.”

Recalling the exact situation, he said when he found out what happened, he was out liming and told the people he was with that he was “making a little turn” to come back.

Some men from Carenage had attacked his friend with a cutlass. So he went looking for them.

He still vividly recalled every detail of planning after over three decades.

The attacked friend had also told his family, who then warned the attackers, “You don’t know who you now mess with there.” As a result, all but one of them fled the area for a while.

Morvant said he knew who would walk ahead to look like regular pedestrians, where he would jump out, the exact spot the car was going to stop, and what pace he would have to go at to catch the man.

“I was in my 20s…I went and got a shotgun from my bredrin.

“The place was a crescent, but there was a narrow walkway. I told two of the fellas to drop out and walk and I would drop out lower down so it did not look like we were together.

“So I’m coming down the walkway. I saw a youthman walking and stop, as if he recognised the other fellas. He take off he slippers and start tiptoeing in the back. I went right behind him and said, ‘Turn around, why you tiptoeing?’”

He had the barrel of the gun pressed against the man’s face.

But he let the man walk free, as that was only meant to be a warning.

He then asked the friend who was attacked where the others lived, and firebombed one of their houses.

“I came for something and I didn’t get it. I wasn’t going empty-handed.”

He said young people in gangs now are “totally clueless” and think shooting and killing are the only ways to get revenge.

He also alluded to the involvement of the protective services as he remembered when a high-ranking official of the Defence Force asked him to “start up a drug block” for him and that he (the official) would provide the cocaine.

Focused on building a family, he declined the offer.

While neither admitting nor denying he has killed people before, he said, “Collectively, we’ve done some things. If now you say, ‘Remember so and so? That man had died,’ I can’t dispute it.

“But guns were not as common then. I use rel blade, cutlass, ratchet, razor…”

Asked if he would ever consider harming someone who has wronged an innocent person again, he said, “I have enough reasons right now I could give you that I could send a fella home for. But I may not be as lucky as back then to make a clean getaway.”

The final former gang member, Maloney, said his generation “broke the rules real bad.

“Those before me set those rules.

“It was supposed to be that if a man from one area run into another and does something to a man, gang leaders would call each other and then deal with each person within their own camps…Now it’s I running back into your place if you run into mine. We riding and dealing with him one time and say to a– with the leader.”

He said another way the rules were broken was when a young man from his community robbed an elderly woman.

“She teach you in primary school and you come and holding gun for her…You don’t s–t where you eat and sleep.”

He also grew up in an abusive household.

“I was afraid of the dark. I associated the dark with bad things, because it was when it was dark that my mother would get licks.

“I always wanted to defend my mother, but didn’t know how to do it…I couldn’t fight. That built a real anger and rage in me, and (violence) was the only way to get that rage out.

“It was all about defending people. I couldn’t bear to see people get advantaged, and it wasn’t that we were bad men, but we were bad.”

He started selling drugs at 16, which he learnt about through a family friend.

“We were poor and when I went to this friend’s house, I realised they had everything we didn’t have. But then I would see their mother selling this thing in a piece of foil every day and I didn’t know what it was. So I found out.”

He then began his own drug blocks. He said he got help from the police, who would inform him in advance of upcoming raids so he could hide his stash.

Asked if it was profitable, he said, “As a youthman, yes. You could probably go a party or get a pair of sneakers. It wasn’t to buy car or build house or anything like that.”

It was during the Say No To Drugs campaign he decided to stop. But he also saw the corruption that was behind the scenes.

“Washing cocaine is like making fudge. It’s the same ingredients, but yours might be grainy, somebody else own hard, mine is soft…Pipers would tell you your grade.

“So I gave up my drugs because we put our hands up and said no to drugs, as the campaign said. Then a piper tell me, ‘Boy, a man down the road have your grade.’ I say, ‘What?’ Dem fellas was taking drugs from one block and putting it right back into the system in a next block.”

All three men said issues which plagued their communities since the 70s are still prevalent today. These include lack of/no water, poor roads and infrastructure, and no proper garbage-removal system.

They believe the lack of care and attention in communities, in addition to home environments, has a part to play in young people leading negative lifestyles.

“In 1969, the then government said they could fix the water problem in a year’s time…It’s 2024 and here we are,” one of the men said.

Their comments mimicked late rapso legend Brother Resistance’s tune Vampire Season.

He sings, “When yuh hear it’s vampire season, now that’s a season of pain/Politrickan by yuh door and they knocking, manifesto pack up with lie/Ole talk and promises and one set of mamaguy.”

He continues, “But as they get to office, let me tell you what they do: Any time they see you coming, they does turn they back on you.”

He then urges the public to “light up the chalice” to “run the vampire.”

However, they all dismissed a common belief among young gang members now: that there are few to no opportunities for youth development.

“That is bulls–t,” one of the men said.

“We had no opportunities. We could say that. It had Cadets and Servol…Now, it have countless opportunities, so they are making excuses.”

Another chimed in to say the locations of some opportunities are also off-limits to some young men because of gang wars they are involved in.

They also all believe high-ranking officials are behind most of what causes modern gang culture to thrive.

“No ghetto youth have the play to bring in a container of drugs and guns,” Boot Hill said.

“You could kind of see what dem little boys saying about they against the system, but I can’t agree with them wholeheartedly, because they killing innocent people.”

For instance, in May 2023, police warned TT Postal Corporation (TTPost) workers to avoid wearing clothing or accessories that displayed certain numbers, as this could provoke attacks from rival gangs who use these numbers to identify themselves.

It stemmed from an incident in which a female worker was using an umbrella with the number six on it, when she was confronted by gang members.

They told her things like, “You lucky we not strapped, because if we were strapped we would have pelt some shots behind you.”

And in October 2021, 32-year-old garbage collector Nizam Ali Cadette was killed on Laventille Road while working. He was in the “wrong zone” during an ongoing gang war, as he was from Bath Street, East Port of Spain. After this, the Port of Spain City Council proposed police officers escort sanitation workers when they go to East Port of Spain.

Asked if they believe gangs are necessary in modern TT, the three men gave Newsday the same response: “Yes and no.”

They believe TT is facing a “leadership crisis.”

When the topic of peace talks was put to them, the men all sighed deeply.

Maloney said, “It has been tried and tested, but people don’t have honour and integrity any more.”

The three men now mentor young people and try to keep them away from crime.

Morvant recalled seeing a young man go down the wrong path.

“I pulled him aside and while talking to him, I started to cry.”

Some time later, while he was driving, he saw the young man “with his shirt and tie and some documents in his hand looking prim. And I just smiled.

“If you could save just one, you could save so many more.”

He said trauma needs to be addressed holistically with young men, instead of just sending them for a few counselling sessions and hoping that fixes everything.

Boot Hill and Maloney said schoolteachers have asked them why they even bother to try mentoring specific students, because “they cannot be helped.”

They dismiss those sentiments and still try anyway.

“If you are being rejected at home, you come to school and the teachers telling you you are a lost cause, what you think will happen to that child, mentally?” Boot Hill asked.

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