(Trinidad Guardian) More young Afro-Trinidadian males are dying compared to males in any other age group or ethnicity.
In 2023, 136 Afro-Trinidadians (30 years old and under) were murdered, while 23 Indo-Trinidadians of the same age bracket were killed, according to data provided by the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS).
This means that 491 per cent more Afro-Trinidadian males (30 years old and under) are murdered than Indo-Trinidadian males of the same age.
According to Guardian Media’s calculations of the 2023 figures, an Afro-Trinidadian male of that age group was murdered, on average, every three days and an Indo-Trinidadian of that group was murdered every 16 days.
Across all age groups and sexes, an Afro-Trinidadian is murdered every day while an Indo-Trinidadian is murdered every three-and-a-half days.
The statistics requested from the TTPS included the races, sexes, ages and locations of all murder victims in 2002 and 2023.
The data revealed that in 2023, approximately seven out of every ten murder victims were Afro-Trinidadians (65 per cent), while two out of every ten victims were Indo-Trinidadians (19 per cent), 14 per cent were ‘mixed’ and one per cent were Venezuelan nationals.
The average age of a murder victim in 2022 and 2023 was 37 years old.
In 2023, 63 per cent of all murder victims were between 20 years old to 39 years old, while six per cent of victims were between one year old and 19 years old.
Ninety per cent of victims were male and ten per cent were female.
Over both years, Arima was found to be the ‘most-murderous’ place, accounting for nine per cent of all murders—110 murders.
Port-of-Spain was the second-most murderous place with 69 murders, followed by Laventille/Morvant in third with 67 murders.
According to the 2011 census—the most recent—East Indians accounted for 35.4 per cent of the population, Africans—34.2 per cent and Mixed—22.8 per cent.
The State has turned its back on young Black men—David Muhammad
Founder and director of the Black Agenda Project, Dr David Muhammad, has devoted much of his life to attempting to uplift young men from marginalised communities in East Port-of-Spain, particularly young Afro-Trinidadian men.
Some of the young men he mentors were, and in a few cases are, gang members, but he refuses to write them off as lost causes. He believes that too many youths, especially Afro-Trinidadians, have been abandoned and scorned by society.
“The national neglect and the national scorn that the State has completely turned its back on our young Black men, in particular, in our society … And with young people being targeted by gangs—in particular, to store illegal firearms on the premise that they are less likely to be stopped and searched or apprehended—it has roped them into this culture even earlier and adds to the doom that we are lamenting over.
“We tend to have these sensationalised views, calling for a particular measure—the hangman, a state of emergency or joint patrols, or legislation—but if we think about it, we have a 2017 gang report that left us startled by the number of teenagers involved in violent crime. Yet, here we are in 2024 again marvelling over the number of teenagers involved in violent crimes.
“When we look at the 2017 report, many of the people who committed the act of murder in 2023 and 2024 would have been 11 years old at the time when the last major gang reports came out, but seven years ago, when that report came out, we were still obsessed with these catch the criminal, lock up the criminal and throw-away-the-key kind of approach, without, at that time, paying attention to what was happening with young men who were nine, ten and 11 years old.
“It’s as though we sit back and watch young boys become teenagers, and then from teenagers becoming young adults who begin to commit these types of crimes and then pay attention to them as a demographic problem for the first time in their lives. If more attention was paid to them when they were nine, ten or 11 years old, maybe we would have less of a problem now that they are 18, 19 or 20 years old,” Dr Muhammad lamented.
‘Escalating criminality fuelled by politicians, political system’
Dr Muhammed believed that the escalating criminality among at-risk youth is fuelled by politicians and a political system which he describes as among the worst in the civilised world. He said its adversarial nature places solutions to problems like crime as a secondary priority behind the advancement of a party’s political interests.
“I am not saying, and I will not say, that our politicians do not care, but what I am convinced of is that they care more about their political survival amid so much culpability about what’s going wrong. The key focus is to continue recycling and introducing new strategies to remain in office a bit longer, even if it means at the expense of the social crisis that we are seeing within our society.
“I think our political pettiness is starting to hurt the country where it is more a question of who I like and who I dislike; who will get credit and who will not get credit; who will look good or will end up looking bad. You have so much impression management, attempts to silence voices that may be speaking the truth if that truth does not show them up in a complimentary light, and persistent recycling of the same bold elitist favourites who get national multimillion-dollar opportunities to enrich themselves. It has become our culture to make these things a priority and it’s all manifesting itself in the neglect of our young men,” the author said.
Communities in desperate need of help—British study
In 2019, an assessment of gang-related homicides and police corruption in T&T commissioned by the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Service reported that T&T’s spike in violence was due largely to gang violence carried out by and against young men, primarily of African descent, using guns.
“Researchers asked a gang leader why so many young people in Trinidad are shot and killed. He responded by saying, ‘It’s a ranking thing’. He explained that for the young men in his community, respect is a serious issue and disrespecting the wrong person can get you shot.
A second gang leader told the researchers that a deadly gang war had started over “small talk”, a term he used to describe petty disputes. A third gang leader told the researchers that a gang war started because he heard a member of another gang saying disrespectful things about him (Katz, Maguire & Choate, 2011). These dynamics are consistent with the notion that a dangerous street culture has arisen in T&T; one in which young men are highly sensitive to their social status and resolve perceived acts of disrespect using violence.
“There are communities that could benefit from a thoughtful mix of evidence-based prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies. They are communities that are in desperate need of help,” the body which has statutory responsibility for the inspection of British police forces reported.
