Seventh-day Adventist pastor and activist, Clive Dottin, describes the National Day of Prayer as a great initiative, but says he hoped the prayer would have been taken into every community, igniting a nationwide movement capable of shifting the nation's direction and breaking what he called a destructive paradigm of crime. Dottin warns, Trinidad and Tobago remains crippled by rampant crime and corruption, insisting that a nation held hostage by such forces cannot be truly independent...
00:00Pastor Clive Dutton is calling for a nationwide stand against corruption,
00:05demanding the breakup of what he describes as a dangerous alliance between gangs and those in positions of power.
00:12I want to see a disruption, all right, of the alliance between the gangs, the corrupt police, corrupt soldiers and corrupt prison officers and corrupt politicians.
00:26I want to see a complete breaking up of that.
00:29That is why I didn't want no parade, I'm going to be honest with you, and no fireworks,
00:34because the whole nation needs to team up and come together to deal with the guys who are destroying us,
00:44who are corrupt to a very rotten level.
00:47We have to deal with that, otherwise we are going nowhere.
00:51He says the dire state of crime taking hold of the country is frightening,
00:55and as the public doesn't seem to grasp the severity of it.
01:00I am one who has said, and I will continue to say, that we have lost our independence.
01:07There are too many issues crashing on us as a nation,
01:12and I still do not believe that the country understands the depth of the criminal,
01:20mafiatic syndicates that operate in the country with Latin American assistance and guidance.
01:28I don't feel we are really, as a nation, that we really understand where we are.
01:35Pastor Dutton paints a grim picture of crime in Trinidad and Tobago,
01:40pointing to children trained to use guns, young girls drawn into gangs,
01:46and entire families passing criminal activity from one generation to the next.
01:51I have met young people as young as 12 and 11 who know how to use a gun with absolute proficiency.
01:59And then we have the issue of girls involving themselves in gangs,
02:06being the partner, the sexual partner, not the married sexual partner,
02:12you know, the sexual partner of unscrupulous men called gang leaders and assassins.
02:18Then we have what I have always called the triple intergenerational crime programme we have.
02:27You have families, OK, where you have three generations that have been involved in criminal activity.
02:36He says the boldness of the criminal element knows no bounds.
02:41Imagine we have a state of emergency and we have Independence Day,
02:45and this weekend I've seen some of the most violent murders.
02:50You have the issue of the shooting of a medical doctor, all right?
02:56Six times, sometimes in her face and they say an eye, one of her eyes has been lost.
03:03And then you have a prison official, thank God for him,
03:06who was behind and observed what was taking place and courageously intercepted.
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