Killed with ease, impunity in T&T,,,,

Killed with ease, impunity in T&T

...violence targeting criminal justice, attacks on prisons officers and cops
Gail Alexander
Published:
Sunday, June 12, 2016

By now, more than one aspect of T&T’s issues has caught the eye of British criminologist Dr Simon Cottee, a writer for The Atlantic who’s in this country for research.

Cambridge scholar, Cottee, who’s attached to Kent University’s sociology division, also worked at Bangor University’s Social Science unit and UWI, St Augustine’s criminology division several years ago. Currently doing work on the sociology of religion, he’s recently completed an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study of ex-Muslims in Britain and Canada.

Cottee visited T&T earlier this year, investigating radicalism in T&T and possible alignment of nationals to the Islamic State (Isis), a subject in which he specialises with The Atlantic which analyses issues regionally.

After returning last week, Cottee said he’s sensed a new dynamic on the crime front,

“...Violence targeting criminal justice—attacks on prison guards, police and similar officials, such people being killed with ease and impunity.”

This is in addition to a moral coarsening in T&T which he’s detected, but acknowledges is a worldwide trend.

Cottee isn’t wrong. In the brief space of recent months the population has been on high alert as security forces deal with a spate of unusual incidents.

• The recent central Trinidad crime wave

• Port-of-Spain “jailbreak jitters” over months

• A grenade detonated in Barataria between warring Rasta City and Muslim gang members

• Golden Grove prison remand facility unrest where inmates include members of Central’s “Unruly Isis” gang

• Slaying of prisons officers, servicemen and a prisoner transport service officer

• Firebombings of DJ’s car in Woodbrook and policeman’s Central home

• Social media voice note threats over a week ago of an Isis bomb attack at local malls followed closely by bomb threats in North and South, and subsequently by a similar threat on schools

• A grenade which fell out of a bag held by a man in Carli Bay the previous week

• Keys to the Port-of-Spain prison remand area going missing, with a prisons officer now before the courts
And this week: Another bomb threat at the University of the West Indies. Plus discovery that day by a Point Fortin resident of a fake hand grenade near a Point school.