Trinidad business lobby hires ex-FBI agent to lead anti-gang unit

(Trinidad Guardian) A crack-shot team of an­ti-crime ex­perts has been hired by a busi­ness lob­by group to as­sist the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in dis­man­tling and pros­e­cut­ing crim­i­nal gangs who have been linked to the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders in the coun­try.

Lead­ing the charge is for­mer Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (FBI) Spe­cial Agent Robert Clark, who has been cred­it­ed with bring­ing Los An­ge­les’ bur­geon­ing gang wars to a halt in 2014 with his unique ini­tia­tives.

Clark was hired by a group of pri­vate-sec­tor busi­ness peo­ple — The T&T Cit­i­zens Al­liance Against Crime — sev­en months ago to part­ner with the TTPS. The T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, along with sev­er­al NGOs and pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies, are mem­bers of this group which was formed in De­cem­ber 2018.

There is a pro­pos­al to em­ploy Clark as a se­nior of­fi­cer of the Po­lice Ser­vice to op­er­ate his own spe­cialised unit, ac­cord­ing to cor­re­spon­dence shared among mem­bers of the group.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day from Cal­i­for­nia, Clark said the team hired by the Al­liance has come up with crime-fight­ing and crime pre­ven­tion pro­grammes tai­lor-made to com­bat T&T’s spi­ralling crime rate, es­pe­cial­ly the out-of-con­trol gang wars.

The mur­der count for the first sev­en months of the year has sur­passed 300 and last month there were 24 killings in just one week. The sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed this news­pa­per to lead a call for de­ci­sive ac­tion.

Clark, who served as a con­sul­tant in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca for sev­er­al years af­ter he re­tired from the FBI in 2016, said this new ini­tia­tive will make a dif­fer­ence be­cause un­like the rec­om­men­da­tions made by for­eign con­sul­tants in the past, these have been “right-sized” for T&T.

Clark was in­tro­duced to this coun­try’s crime scourge in 2017 when he vis­it­ed as a part of a group of con­sul­tants at­tend­ing a se­cu­ri­ty con­fer­ence. He served in the FBI for 20 years and was cred­it­ed with lead­ing the FBI’s 2014 pro­gramme to rid Los An­ge­les of its gang prob­lems.

Act­ing on be­half of the Al­liance, Clark has so far trained 45 lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers in one of the first phas­es of a lo­cal pro­gramme to ed­u­cate chil­dren about hu­man traf­fick­ing.

“We have right-sized all of the strate­gies we have for T&T to make them ap­plic­a­ble to the coun­try and the cul­ture, as well as the TTPS in­fra­struc­ture and abil­i­ties. We have not on­ly looked at this in terms of strate­gies and ac­tion­able items but we have al­so looked at train­ing and equip­ment as well as a men­tor­ship pro­gramme, iden­ti­fy­ing those pro­gres­sive and proac­tive lead­ers with­in the TTPS who can be a part of re­al­ly ab­sorb­ing these ini­tia­tives,” Clark told Guardian Me­dia.

CIA ex­pert among mul­ti-faceted team

In the doc­u­ment ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the Al­liance iden­ti­fied Clark and In­spec­tor Ray Fes­ti­no of the New York Po­lice De­part­ment (NYPD) and CSI de­tec­tive Da­mon Mar­tin as part­ners to the Al­liance.

“We hired six con­sul­tants to work with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the TTPS to de­vel­op pro­grammes and plans to as­sist re: the re­duc­tion in crime. This was ex­pand­ed to eight con­sul­tants, which in­clud­ed the fol­low­ing Clark, CIA ex­pert in the field of in­tel­li­gence Dr. Hans Mumm, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Cal­i­for­nia & Con­gress­man Dan Lun­gren, LAPD De­tec­tive Cedric Wash­ing­ton, Chief Bill Carter of In­gle­wood School dis­trict, Hu­man Traf­fick­ing ex­pert Dr Stephany Pow­ell of Jour­ney Out in Cal­i­for­nia,” the doc­u­ment stat­ed.

There was, how­ev­er, no in­for­ma­tion on how much this ini­tia­tive would cost and who was foot­ing the bill.

The goal of the Al­liance is to de­vel­op a plan to re­duce the homi­cide rate and im­prove the de­tec­tion rate, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment.

“Robert Clark led a joint pro­gramme be­tween the FBI and LAPD; they de­vel­oped a cold case unit, solved over 650 cas­es and took the clear­ance rate to 85%. Robert de­vel­oped over 12 best prac­tices with­in the FBI and these are now im­ple­ment­ed na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” it con­tin­ued.

Ac­cord­ing to the Al­liance, Clark has been re­ceived with open arms by the TTPS.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Al­liance founder Nigel Sali­na was in high praise of Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

“All ku­dos to the CoP. He is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence,” Sali­na said.

He point­ed out that there has nev­er been a col­lab­o­ra­tion of this type be­tween the pri­vate sec­tor and po­lice be­fore in T&T.

The doc­u­ment from the Al­liance stat­ed that Clark will be ap­point­ed as a Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent in the TTPS in the com­ing weeks, but both Sali­na and Clark were hes­i­tant to con­firm whether this was true.

“I’ve heard that but that would be a ques­tion bet­ter an­swered by the CoP or Nigel. They would know the an­swer,” Clark said.

When asked, Sali­na said, “That is spec­u­la­tion. We are hop­ing that this will hap­pen.”

Grif­fith was con­tact­ed on Tues­day for com­ment but de­ferred ques­tions to the TTPS’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment.

Al­though a list of ques­tions was sent via email on Tues­day, there was no re­sponse up un­til press time on Wednes­day.