Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land is call­ing for cool­er heads to pre­vail as there are claims of busi­ness­men want­i­ng to take mat­ters in­to their own hands in re­sponse to a surge in ex­tor­tions.

Scot­land, along with se­nior po­lice and mem­bers of the De­fence Force vis­it­ed Ch­agua­nas on Fri­day to re­as­sure mer­chants of their com­mit­ment to se­cu­ri­ty.

Dur­ing the UNC’s me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed re­ferred to a re­cent con­ver­sa­tion with a busi­ness­man who claimed to have re­ject­ed ex­tor­tion­ists.

Mo­hammed said the busi­ness­man firm­ly re­buffed the crim­i­nals who con­front­ed him and vowed to take mat­ters in­to his own hands if pressed fur­ther.

“He (the busi­ness­man) even went on to say if he sur­vives what­ev­er they throw at him, he rather take all the mon­ey in his pos­ses­sion and ‘deal with’ these in­di­vid­u­als.

“This is be­cause he can’t trust what is hap­pen­ing right now and this is what the cit­i­zens are say­ing be­cause we are see­ing so many po­lice in­volved in some of these ex­tor­tion and kid­nap­ping and this is some­thing that needs to be root­ed out from the sys­tem.”

Mo­hammed said the feel­ings grew as res­i­dents felt they could not re­ly on the State for sup­port when at­tacked and were tempt­ed to take mat­ters in­to their own hands.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Scot­land said the pub­lic should give the po­lice a chance to treat with ex­tor­tion, not­ing the cre­ation of an An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Task Force in Sep­tem­ber.

The Task Force, which is led by ACP Ad­min­is­tra­tion Richard Smith, was in­ves­ti­gat­ing 20 cas­es of ex­tor­tion as of No­vem­ber 1. Scot­land said he has been in close con­tact with mem­bers of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, not­ing that part­ner­ship with law en­force­ment was cru­cial to cre­at­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties.

“I have met with them (Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber) four times in ten weeks. My pres­ence on the ground (on Fri­day) was not a fluke, it was well thought out. What we want now is for the same busi­ness­man to con­tact the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit and the fact that a spe­cial unit has been set up means that the TTPS is tak­ing this se­ri­ous­ly.”

Scot­land stat­ed that the unit con­sist­ed of vet­ted po­lice of­fi­cers, and he is con­fi­dent they will con­duct them­selves pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

He al­so called on stake­hold­ers to work with the State’s ini­tia­tives to im­prove safe­ty, re­gard­less of their po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sion.

“When it comes to any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty I see no pol­i­tics in this. I see one Trinidad and To­ba­go and every­body work­ing to­geth­er.”

‘Ex­tor­tion unit and hot­line in place’

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed the head of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Garvin Si­mon, who al­so ad­vised against busi­ness­peo­ple tak­ing the law in­to their own hands.

“The unit and the hot­line are in place to as­sist any­one who has been ap­proached by ex­tor­tion­ists.

“These are of­fi­cers who are spe­cial­ly trained to treat with mat­ters like these. This is the prop­er way to deal with these is­sues.”

Dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Barataria/San Juan MP and shad­ow Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said among the rec­om­men­da­tions put for­ward by the UNC for re­duc­ing ex­tor­tions were more re­sourc­ing for po­lice, to­geth­er with a greater use of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

“We have in­di­cat­ed that the SSA right now in charge of in­tel­li­gence has a greater role to play in kid­nap­ping and ex­tor­tion. The Op­po­si­tion leader has called for strict laws in re­la­tion to these mat­ters, in par­tic­u­lar stand your ground laws, is­sues in re­la­tion to ex­tor­tion and ev­i­dence-gath­er­ing,” he said.

“The is­sue is in­creas­ing, it takes not on­ly that from a law en­force­ment side but there may be a need to have more man­age­ment and prop­er re­sourc­ing when it comes to is­sues of ex­tor­tion and kid­nap­ping.”

Ho­sein added that ex­tor­tions and kid­nap­pings were not lim­it­ed to cen­tral Trinidad, re­fer­ring to in­stances with­in his con­stituen­cy where there were re­ports of the crime.