Gang violence can be reduced through improved systems – former President Granger

Feb 19, 2023 News

Kaieteur News – Gang violence could be reduced by improving the public education system to attain ‘real’ universal primary and secondary education through the augmentation of attendance, expanding ‘real’ employment and training opportunities for youth, encouraging ‘real’ social cohesion to promote cooperation and reduce inequality among communities, former President David Granger believes.

Granger speaking during his weekly Public Interest programme said that gang violence could also be reduced by reforming the public security system by promoting ‘real’ community policing; and empowering neighbourhood democratic councils to ensure ‘real’ inclusionary democracy (Article 13) through the timely conduct of Local Government Elections (LGE).

Former President David Granger

The former Head-of-State warned that gang violence should not be ‘normalised’ as an inevitable social calamity.

“It can be curbed by the administration’s enlightened enforcement of the National Drug Strategy Master Plan, re-establishment of the National Anti-Narcotics Agency and implementation of the Security Sector Reform Action Plan,” a statement by the former President said.

Granger, a retired Brigadier, said that Guyanese became familiar with the expressions ‘drug-gang’ warfare and ‘phantom gangs’ from the mouths of People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration officials to explain the massacres and murders during the ‘Troubles’ in the early 2000s.

The former president recalled that a senior Guyana Police Force (GPF) official admitted that the murder rate was actually reduced only after a notorious narcotics-trafficker and gang mastermind was incarcerated in a foreign country.

Further, Granger said that narco-trafficking is the root cause of gang violence which plagues the country today. He noted that large gangs are recruited to traffic in illegal narcotics and acquire weapons to expand their business and extend their territory by the use of violence if necessary.

“Medium-size gangs commit armed robberies, banditry, carjackings and small-scale ‘runnings’. Small gangs of a few youths, armed often with a rented revolver, commit street crimes on small businesses such as petrol stations. ‘School’ gangs are copycats of behaviour exemplified by the ‘Gaza vs Gully’ rivalry ‘dancehall’ sub-culture,” Granger said on his programme.

The former President said that current criminal violence is connected to gangs which created a sub-culture based on guns, drugs –two imported elements of transnational crime.

The landings of illegal aircraft at Bisaruni,Issano, Kuruduni, Kwakwani and the ‘King Coca’ incident at Mahdia in the hinterland over the last thirty months were examples of the narco-gangs’ geographical, logistical and organizational proficiency, he stated.

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Bisaruni, Former President David Granger, Issano, Kuruduni, Kwakwani, Mahdia

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