00:00Four lives were snuffed out in a shooting incident in Black Rock, Tobago, in the early
00:05hours of Monday morning. Three men died at the scene, the fourth at hospital.
00:11Over the past months, the escalating gun crimes on the island have raised concerns for many,
00:17with Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley calling for a larger deployment of officers from Trinidad
00:22to work in Tobago to assist with criminal activity.
00:26Today, Dr Varnes-James tells us it's the cross-culture.
00:30I think the gang culture must have been associated in some way with the availability of opportunities
00:38cross-island, across the two islands, between the two islands. So the criminal enterprise
00:46that is evolving in the country, Tobago, as Rowley was saying quite correctly, is not
00:52immune from.
00:53Dr James believes that the existence of gangs in Black Rock and Bethel and similar places
00:59is occurring due to the failure to transform the national economy, so criminality becomes
01:04a way people try to make money.
01:07Tobagonians are finding themselves under pressure and they're looking for ways, for outlets.
01:12And one of those outlets would be migration to Trinidad. But one of them would be collaboration
01:17with criminal elements in Trinidad to find a way to make a living. So it's not a mystery
01:23The key question is, what are we failing to do, both in Tobago and in Trinidad, to
01:27deal with crime? The Prime Minister's been in power now for near 10 years. And at no
01:32stage am I aware of him wanting to run a society in which crime is increasing. But crime increased
01:39dramatically over his period, over his 10 years.
01:44He says focus and tighter security must be on the transport between the islands, as it
01:50was before, if the movement of guns and drugs is to be intercepted.
01:54In those days, you couldn't take the boat and go to Trinidad without proper screening
02:00so people could see what you're moving. And you couldn't come from Trinidad to Tobago
02:04without properly filing what you're moving and so on. But in those days, of course, there
02:09was proper documentation and recording of the contents of the traffic. Nowadays, we've
02:16abandoned that project and we simply could jump on and you open your trunk and they look
02:21and it's not a serious effort to understand what's the movement.
02:25He also believes that education, or the lack of education in some cases,
02:30is a major contributory factor.
02:33You have large numbers of people who have none of the normal skills you need to build
02:39a viable, creative, dynamic economy, to do innovation and all of those things.
02:45And apart from the fact that we tend to have inadequate policies to deal with them when
02:51they travel, like in the music industry and so on, apart from all of that, these fundamental
02:57structures do not provide you with the tools required to tackle crime prevention properly.
03:05Remember, it's prevention that will be the main way you will bring
03:10the growth of crime under control.
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