POLICE Commissioner Gary Griffith is admitting that gangsters are being given lucrative state contracts that are fuelling crime.
He made the comment at weekly Police media briefing at the Police Administration Building in Port-of-Spain today.
He said the allocating of contracts to gangsters should be stopped since “if it is that we cut that cord it would it would prevent them, it would cripple them from hiring gang members, from hiring what is known as the ‘shooters.’ When I spoke about the 50-odd ‘shooters’, they comprised the individuals who have been instrumental in the majority of the 500 homicides last year and this year.”
He said, “The shooters, they operate based on funding they get from their gang leaders. The gang leaders, they sit in their towers in their exquisite homes, and they just call the shots. They don’t press/operate the trigger.”
Griffith said, “Those are the individuals that get paid because they know that the gang members, they get massive contracts and profits that is them used towards calling hits on individuals both in their own communities and even inside the prison.”
He called also called on adults who are aware of individuals being involved in gang activity to speak out against it.
Griffith said, “Adults have now began to compromise their situation, their principles, their morals by allowing their sons, their little brothers to be involved in criminal activity.”
He said, “We don’t have a youth problem in this country, we have an adult problem.”
