Expert: Reducing fear to improve the economy | Local news

Fear is strangling the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, says regional security expert and strategic security advisor Garvin Heerah.

Heerah said he was concerned about reports of increased gang activity and gang-related killings across the country.

I was speaking at a virtual pre-Budget discussion on Friday on the topic “Are Crime Levels Derailing the Good Intentions of the Upcoming Budget?” Organized by the University of the West Indies Trade and Economic Development Unit, Heerah said crime has affected all aspects of the country, politically, socially, economically and technologically.

He said the national budget to be presented by the Finance Minister tomorrow should reflect initiatives to stabilize the country to reduce fear among citizens.

Hierah said: “Regardless of your status and where you are in society, fear has fallen on the country, and as we enter Monday (Budget Day), our Budget Review, we hope that some of the funding that goes into national security and some other ministries is intended to reduce fear among our citizens so that the impact on the economy can be mitigated.

“We have to understand that in order to stabilize the economy, based on how we look at our spending and our profits, and as a national platform, fear has to be reduced, and that will involve the whole role of the police. , aspects of law enforcement and national security,” Heerah said.

Crime, politics and economics

He explained how crime continues to influence politics.

“Crime influences politics in this country. We now see that a government can actually come into power because of crime, or a government can leave office because of crime. So there is a significant impact of crime on politics in the country, and we recognize that organized crime is rampant in Trinidad and Tobago.

“Organized crime has allowed its tentacles to penetrate the far-reaching official offices of Trinidad and Tobago. So there is an impact of crime on the entire political stability of our country, and we see that. We see a crisis management based on politics,” he said.

Heerah added: “Crime has affected the economy. If I were a foreign investor and I had seen what is happening in Trinidad and Tobago, the crime has terrified the fraternities of foreign investment companies. Chambers of business associations in T&T are facing crises; Everyone is scared and thinking about what the future will bring, and how can I invest in continuity in a crime situation that is spiraling out of control,” he said.

He said T&T’s social fabric has also been affected by crime.

He said some communities are now dependent on criminal activity.

“Based on what we see now, there is a dependence on crime for survival. People are sending out the message that you can only survive if you are involved in crime. There is also the issue of patrimonialism in the social fabric, and this is when a state has lost touch with the ground, something comes up to fill that void and takes care of the water tank, sends the pregnant woman to the hospital , buy the school books for the child, or put food on the table.

“That system controls the communities and the state can no longer control these communities. To gain access to the community, the state has to go through the vetting system, so crime has affected our social fabric. I cannot accept that we should consider gang culture as part of our social system. If you do that, you give oxygen to gangsterism, oxygen to gangsters, and you make it a parrot of our social culture,” Heerah said.

Criminals use varying levels of sophistication, further indicating that technology is influenced by crime.

“We see the sophisticated criminal; we see crime’s efforts moving in the next direction, and to deal with this we are dealing with a more sophisticated police force and law enforcement and intelligence agencies, because crime now controls the technology to move money.

“It’s not just about the gangsters or the common criminals on the side of the road, it’s about the movement of money, the illegal arms trade, the illegal drug trade and the human trafficking. It is a transnational organized crime that manipulates technology to their advantage,” said Heerah.

He said legislation must change to tackle crime.

“Legally speaking, we have to look at the legislation. Crime has affected the legal aspects of the country so much that we are not seeing justice being served and this is a problem,” Heerah said.

He said crime has also affected the environment.

“The environment has changed. Our whole atmosphere has changed. Trinidad now ranks first in the world for murders per capita. This is a place pregnant with crime, and this also happens in peaceful Tobago. We understand that the breadbasket of Tobago is tourism and attracting foreigners, and when you see what is happening, you wonder what happened to peaceful T&T,” Heerah said.

Organized crime

Criminologist Daurius Figueira, who was also part of the virtual discussion, said T&T’s organized crime has its roots in Colombian transnational organized crime.

“Colombian transnational organized crime has been exercising hegemony over the provocation of T&T for so long. Our first major homicide spike in 2008 was actually caused by the end of the third evolutionary phase and the dawn of the fourth of Colombian transnational organized crime that fueled the 2008 homicide spike. What we now need to understand, from the first decade of the 21st century, the entire Caribbean landscape fell apart.

“In T&T today, we do not have one dominant transnational organized crime group. We have two now. The Colombian business model and the Mexican business model. And in periods of intense violence unprecedented in T&T between 2017 and 2022, we are driven by the fact that these two dominant business models are so incompatible with each other that this inherent contradiction is fueling a war for dominance that has had consequences for T&T , and that is why you have to understand the specific nature of the violence,” he said.

Figueira said the crime developed quickly.

“What we have done at T&T is to keep talking in generalities. No one understands the heterogeneous nature of the landscape of criminal action that is rapidly developing in T&T and fueling the violence; this has brought about the symptoms of social collapse. So what happens is that we need to understand the inherent dynamics of these two dominant business models in the Caribbean.

“It’s not just in T&T; violence is starting to resurface in the eastern Caribbean states and even Belize, so this is a Caribbean reality. So we need a serious and in-depth conversation to expose the nature of these two business models, their operating procedures, their order of battle, their order of power, the struggle between them for dominance in T&T, and how that struggle is shaping the nature of crime and the criminal action on the ground is changing,” he said.

He said criminal activities have been evolving since 2017.

“One of the fundamental reasons for that is that the business models are so different that we now have four gang arms within T&T. We have ties with Colombia and Mexico, but there are also criminal actors who are being dispossessed because the criminal enterprise on the ground, under the control of transnational crime in T&T, has fired a significant portion of its former employees.

“And they have been pushed out of the previous roles that they had because the organizations they belong to have all been decimated, so they are now out there and have to live on a daily basis, so they will now take criminal actions that they never experienced. before they participated, but they are now desperately embracing them,” Figueira said.

He continued: “And that is why criminal action is now delving deeper into the fabric of the social order in the search for soft targets. So while this is going on, there is also a simultaneous war between individuals who want to oust the players in the game. So you have complex, simultaneous violence that overlaps in society. And if we refuse to accept this reality and deconstruct it, understand it and acknowledge that it is based on research, we will continue to fall behind.

“So you must now understand that the reality of Tobago’s illegal trade is not the reality of Trinidad. Tobago is better integrated into 21st century development and the pipelines flowing from the South American mainland to the north of the Eastern Caribbean, i.e. Trinidad. Tobago’s illegal trade is now independent of Trinidad, with supplies coming from Tobago to Trinidad. You must understand these realities. The violence in Tobago has now spilled over from Trinidad by dispossessed individuals seeking to take control of Tobago,” Figueira said.