Jensen La Vende

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day he was con­cerned about re­ports made that mem­bers of the me­dia had been threat­ened by sol­diers who pa­trolled the St Paul Street, Port-of-Spain, area fol­low­ing the mur­der of Lance Cor­po­ral Kay­o­de Thomas.In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day Grif­fith said if what hap­pened was in­deed true he apol­o­gised, adding that it would not hap­pen again. Grif­fith said he would speak with the Chief of De­fence Staff Ma­jor Gen Ken­rick Ma­haraj to get fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the de­ploy­ment of the sol­diers in the area. Grif­fith said the me­dia was not the en­e­my and the sol­diers ought to know that.

He said around the world the rule re­gard­ing the mur­der of a mem­ber of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices was that if you touched one you have touched all and the heavy pres­ence of sol­diers in the com­mu­ni­ty was not ir­reg­u­lar or iso­lat­ed to Trinidad.He added that the law must do what was need­ed to sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and the pa­trols by sol­diers with­out the as­sis­tance of po­lice was not il­le­gal.Yes­ter­day masked mem­bers of the Reg­i­ment, claim­ing to be mem­bers of a spe­cial op­er­a­tions unit, were again de­ployed in east Port-of-Spain and again have been ac­cused of beat­ing res­i­dents.One masked of­fi­cer is al­leged to have point­ed a loaded high-pow­ered ri­fle at CNC3 re­porter Samuel Mc Knight and told him if he was to record them he would be dealt with.

The sol­ders were at St Paul Street when the me­dia was called fol­low­ing re­ports of abuse.

When McK­night and his cam­era­man ar­rived they were told not to record the of­fi­cers. Res­i­dents claim short­ly be­fore the me­dia ar­rived the of­fi­cers had as­sault­ed them.The reg­i­ment of­fi­cers were al­so seen pa­trolling McK­ai Lands, Bel­mont, yes­ter­day fol­low­ing protest ac­tion by res­i­dents who de­mand­ed bet­ter roads, wa­ter, street­lights and jobs.The sol­diers told the T&T Guardian if the Prime Min­is­ter was not go­ing to do any­thing about the gangs in the coun­try they would.They were seen ques­tion­ing young men in the area about the where­abouts of a man iden­ti­fied as "Di­a­mond". The sol­diers were heard telling one of the young men that he would re­turn lat­er in the evening for him.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day res­i­dents said they were thank­ful that the of­fi­cers were there as they pro­vid­ed some lev­el of safe­ty but were up­set that the of­fi­cers were as­sault­ing them.The res­i­dents said Thomas was killed by his own neigh­bours who they said used to ben­e­fit from him bring­ing guns, am­mu­ni­tion and cam­ou­flage uni­forms for them.That claim, how­ev­er, was not sup­port­ed by po­lice at­tached to the near­by Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion who said they nev­er had cause to sus­pect the 32-year-old fa­ther of eight of any wrong­do­ing.