Authorities face ‘culture of crime’

For Margaret Charles, the new year began as the old one ended, days filled with grief and no end to a mother’s worst nightmare after her son’s life was taken in a brutal murder.

Sitting on the porch of her home in Moruga, a rural town in southern Trinidad, Margaret experienced a range of emotions as she talked about her son, Shakeem Charles, who was killed last July.

“I’m dealing with it every day,” Margaret told the BBC.

“There’s a letter that Amarah wrote to her father for Christmas, and when we sat down for lunch, she said, ‘No one should sit in that chair, that chair is for Daddy.’

Shakeem’s two children, Amarah, seven, and Amare, three, now spend much more time with their grandparents.

Their 32-year-old father was just one of many homicide victims in Trinidad and Tobago in 2024, which was the Caribbean nation’s deadliest year on record with 624 murders, according to local police.

Shakeem was an Information Technology technician, but his family said that shortly before he was killed, he had started working with a local transport company to earn extra money.

Margaret said her son disappeared on July 9 after taking a job dropping off a passenger in another southern city.

The travel company said Shakeem’s only trip that day ended at around 5.25pm ​​local time.

That night, calls to his cellphone went unanswered. However, his family received an ATM withdrawal notice from a joint bank account.

The next day, through GPS tracking, his car was found abandoned more than 80 km (50 miles) away north-east of Trinidad.

Margaret recalls how, after four days of searching, Shakeem’s body was discovered in the same southern city where he was hired to dump the passenger. An autopsy determined he died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Police have not yet charged anyone in connection with the murder.

With murders on the rise, The government of Trinidad and Tobago declared a state of emergency on December 30. It was originally supposed to last 15 days, but as it was about to end, parliament voted to extend it for another three months until mid-April.

Authorities blamed gang warfare for six killings over the previous two days, while government officials said concern over revenge killings prompted the state of emergency.

Five of the six killings occurred in a shooting incident on December 29 in Laventille, an area just outside the capital, Port of Spain.

Some residents say crime has become part of the culture in Laventille.

Joeth Roberts says what stopped him from joining a gang when the opportunity arose was his upbringing.

“I was approached by a person who was looking for addicts, someone to run the block,” Joeth recalls.

“He offered me a firearm and stuff, but that wasn’t in me,” Joeth says, thanking his parents for the way they raised him.

Shaquille Gaskin, who also lives in Laventille, told the BBC he knew some people “who are too excited to do the wrong thing”.

Shaquille is a musician who plays the drums. He says he stays firmly on the right side of the law, but that there are others in the neighborhood who are drawn to crime.

“That’s because that’s what they know, they grow up watching it, seeing older people doing it, so they automatically get into it.”

The musician believes there are many opportunities for people in so-called “crime hot spots” to be law-abiding citizens, but he thinks the government and others who provide these opportunities need to engage more actively with at-risk communities.

He argues that to get young people on board, a constant effort must be made to get them to stay on track rather than being tempted by the offers of gang leaders.

It’s a thought echoed by Dr Malisa Neptune-Figaro.

The criminologist at the University of the West Indies says her research suggests that gangs became more widespread in Trinidad and Tobago at the beginning of this millennium.

Dr Neptune-Figaro has also found that many offenders were victims themselves at some point.

“You have to look at how they feel as a person. If you feel depressed and you don’t feel like you belong in our contemporary society and mainstream society, you have this parallel society where you feel like you belong,” she says.

“You have to talk about what gangs do for them too, (why) they feel at home.”

The state of emergency gives law enforcement officers additional powers to conduct warrantless arrests and searches.

Homeland Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said the state of emergency had already led to a reduction in murders, shootings, robberies and car thefts.

The police say they have arrested over 650 people.

However, Dr Malisa Neptune-Figaro warns that this crime-fighting tool may only work in the short term.

The criminologist at the University of the West Indies argues that in the long term, there should be a focus on revamping and renewing the criminal justice system.

But she says there needs to be a broader approach, including “different elements of society, our education system, finding jobs for people who are unemployed, giving them alternative measures to crime, more good parenting”.

For Margaret Charles, the extension of the state of emergency has increased her hope that the police will catch whoever killed her son and bring them to justice.

“Not just Shakeem’s case, but in every case, people that they suspect and for one reason or another they couldn’t hold and question them or maybe search them, that something happens,” he says she.