Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the po­lice have been sup­plied with doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence and da­ta on in­va­sions of Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) res­i­den­tial units.Speak­ing fol­low­ing a 90-minute meet­ing yes­ter­day be­tween of­fi­cials of the HDC and the top brass of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Mooni­lal said most HDC ten­ants are de­cent, law-abid­ing, pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zens but there were a "sig­nif­i­cant few crim­i­nal el­e­ments."

Tak­ing part in the meet­ing at the HDC board­room in Port-of-Spain were Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­manuel George, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, DCP Mervyn Richard­son, HDC chair­man Ra­bindra Moo­nan, HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John and oth­er of­fi­cials. Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, who had been ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the meet­ing, was not present.

Armed po­lice of­fi­cers were post­ed out­side the HDC build­ing dur­ing the meet­ing which was held fol­low­ing re­ports of il­le­gal evic­tions and home in­va­sions by gang mem­bers.Mooni­lal said it was well-known that some HDC es­tates housed crim­i­nal el­e­ments. He said the agency had an im­por­tant role to play in re­duc­tion of crime at sev­er­al dif­fer­ent lev­els.The min­is­ter de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as "un­ac­cept­able" and said il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion of HDC units will not be tol­er­at­ed.

His Cab­i­net col­league Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­man­u­al George promised de­ci­sive ac­tion by the po­lice."We want to work with the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties to en­sure that their safe­ty is para­mount in all of this and their con­tin­ued, right­ful oc­cu­pa­tion of their apart­ments is not com­pro­mised in any way."George said there will be in­creased po­lice pa­trols, po­lice posts will be set up and there are al­so plans to in­ten­si­fy com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing.

"The po­lice in­tend to do a lot of stop and search of per­sons who will be go­ing through these ar­eas to check to see the ex­tent to which un­de­sir­able el­e­ments are us­ing these ar­eas for their work."A lot now will go on in terms of the po­lice ac­tion and al­so ac­tion by the HDC and we will be work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to en­sure that we are suc­cess­ful in ad­dress­ing this de­vel­op­ment."

Re­in­forc­ing those state­ments was act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams who promised that the TTPS would not turn a blind eye to law­less­ness and in­tend­ed to swift­ly pros­e­cute peo­ple who breach the law.He gave the as­sur­ance that all com­plaints as­so­ci­at­ed with il­le­gal evic­tion of ten­ants from HDC units will be dealt with ur­gent­ly.

"The TTPS has giv­en the as­sur­ance that we will be part­ner­ing, sup­port­ing and will be work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the HDC to en­sure that all hous­ing lo­ca­tions are places where peo­ple can en­joy a lev­el of free­dom and com­fort be­cause that is nec­es­sary for every cit­i­zen wher­ev­er they live," he said.Williams said the is­sue was more than just il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing a unit and was about all the cir­cum­stances un­der which a per­son was re­moved from the premis­es.

"We are talk­ing about crim­i­nal con­duct to re­move you from your premis­es and that crim­i­nal con­duct could in­volve nu­mer­ous crim­i­nal of­fences," he said."There maybe sev­er­al of­fences which may be com­mit­ted by an in­di­vid­ual who comes to your house, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly an HDC house."