{"id":7952,"date":"2014-01-07T00:16:27","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T04:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=7952"},"modified":"2014-01-07T00:16:27","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T04:16:27","slug":"gary-criminals-killing-criminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=7952","title":{"rendered":"Gary: Criminals killing criminals"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Joel Julien
\nJanuary 07, 2014 – trinidadexpress.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Gary<\/a>SIX out of every ten people murdered last year were involved in \u201cserious criminal activities\u201d, National Security Minister Gary Griffith has said.<\/p>\n

Griffith said because the majority of murders committed in this country for 2013 was criminals killing criminals it was hard for the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service to protect them.
\n
\nIf you are not involved in criminal activities, however, then you have no need to fear about crime in this country, Griffith said<\/p>\n

Griffith made the statements in a telephone interview with the Express yesterday.<\/p>\n

According to statistics from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS), Griffith said 405 people were murdered last year.<\/p>\n

Of the 405 murders, 197 of the killings were gang-related while 47 were drug-related, Griffith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know people might be upset with what I am saying but don\u2019t get upset with me don\u2019t shoot the messenger what I am saying is a fact. These are computerised statistics that are facts, Griffith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what I am saying is, I am not making this up, this is not perception, the fact is that 244 of the 405 persons, the reports we have from the police, is that these persons were involved in serious criminal activities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Griffith said because of their involvement in criminal activity and their disregard for life it is hard to protect them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very difficult for any government, for any law enforcement agency to protect people who are not interested to protect themselves,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are involved in a heavy life of crime, if you are involved in trying to kill other people, if you are involved in drugs it is very difficult for the police to try to protect you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Griffith said for law-abiding citizens serious crime has reduced by 43 per cent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the facts have shown is that those persons who are law-abiding citizens that there has been a 43 per cent reduction in every single major criminal activity involving law abiding citizens,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are not involved in criminal activities, you are a law-abiding citizen of this country, there has been a reduction in persons like that who have been kidnapped, robbed, raped, vehicles stolen and murdered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Griffith said he was not playing with statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I am saying is a scientific fact. I did this not to try to play with statistics but to show that I needed this for us to analyse exactly where the problem lies for us to focus our resources,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cData will show worldwide that if major criminal activities go up, the homicide rate goes up, it follows it almost the same and vice versa\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case we have almost every single major criminal activity going down but the murder rate is staying the same thing so something is wrong and the reason for it is because of this situation with gang warfare and gang members shooting other gang members and fighting for turf,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

Griffith said the starving of funding for gang members has caused them to \u201cfight over scraps like pothounds\u201d and kill each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will continue to peg them back because I am not going to negotiate with criminals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Griffith said once the gang situation is dealt with the annual murder toll will drop by more than 200 killings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe night is darkest before the dawn. We have to bleed to heal,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

He called on the country\u2019s law abiding citizens to do more.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing to cause this situation to stop even faster is trying to get the 1.3 million law-abiding citizens to bring the gang leaders to justice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we get these main individuals, the rest of the gangs will dismantle. If the gangs dismantle you are talking about over 200 less murders per annum,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

He said the National Security Ministry has seven initiatives to deal with the gangs in this country.<\/p>\n

Griffith said he could not reveal these initiatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus now is dealing with the gangs. We are fully aware of what we are required to do and we are doing it,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/www.trinidadexpress.com\/news\/Gary-Criminals-killing-criminals-238983071.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joel Julien January 07, 2014 – trinidadexpress.com SIX out of every ten people murdered last year were involved in \u201cserious criminal activities\u201d, National Security Minister Gary Griffith has said. Griffith said because the majority of murders committed in this country for 2013 was criminals killing criminals it was hard for the Trinidad and Tobago … Continue reading Gary: Criminals killing criminals<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1,178,396,7,160],"tags":[44,889,890,49],"class_list":["post-7952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-general-tt","category-media","category-peoples-partnership","category-politics","category-security","tag-crime-in-tt","tag-gary-griffith","tag-joel-julien","tag-tt-govt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7953,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952\/revisions\/7953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}