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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Cops net suspected gangsters, electricity thieves in raids

by

Shane Superville
35 days ago
20250122
A student from South East Secondary School walks past police officers during an SoE exercise along Nelson Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

A student from South East Secondary School walks past police officers during an SoE exercise along Nelson Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ROBERTO CODALLO

A 14-year-old boy and two 16- year-olds are among four peo­ple ar­rest­ed for sus­pect­ed gang af­fil­i­a­tion in San Juan.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) vis­it­ed Fran­cis Av­enue, Pe­tit Bourg, around 4 pm on Sun­day when they al­leged­ly saw the three teenagers stand­ing near a 19-year-old sus­pect­ed gang mem­ber.

On see­ing the po­lice, the 14-year-old boy al­leged­ly dropped a blue ban­dana, which po­lice searched and found two rounds of 45 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The teenagers were ar­rest­ed on en­quiries for be­ing af­fil­i­ates of a gang, while the man, de­scribed as a sus­pect­ed gang mem­ber, was al­so ar­rest­ed.

Mean­while, an ear­ly morn­ing ex­er­cise in east Port-of-Spain re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of 21 peo­ple and the seizure of a gun and am­mu­ni­tion yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of var­i­ous units in­clud­ing the Port-of-Spain Task Force be­gan the ex­er­cise around 5 am where they tar­get­ed sev­er­al ar­eas in east Port-of-Spain in­clud­ing Nel­son and Dun­can Streets. Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers with help from the Po­lice Ca­nine Unit con­duct­ed sev­er­al house-to-house search­es where they found and ar­rest­ed three men iden­ti­fied as gang mem­bers.

One of the men was found with a pis­tol and ten rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion.

Sev­en women and five men were al­so ar­rest­ed for lar­ce­ny of elec­tric­i­ty as tech­ni­cians from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) were called in to re­move sev­er­al il­le­gal elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions.

Al­so held were two men want­ed for pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion and two men want­ed in re­la­tion to bur­glar­ies and rob­beries.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Nel­son Street yes­ter­day, sev­er­al res­i­dents were seen look­ing at teams of heav­i­ly armed po­lice in tac­ti­cal gear search­ing apart­ments and homes.

One moth­er, who asked not to be named, said while she nev­er felt un­safe in her three years of walk­ing her son to school, the sight of po­lice was re­as­sur­ing.

“It’s some­thing I want to see more of.

“We need to get more of these of­fi­cers out of the sta­tions and out on the street do­ing this kind of thing. It makes you feel bet­ter es­pe­cial­ly the way things go­ing.”

The woman said she lives in an­oth­er part of east Port-of-Spain and ad­mit­ted that ten­sions be­tween neigh­bour­hoods have made it dif­fi­cult for some peo­ple to vis­it dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties even for work.

Of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) and the Port-of-Spain City Po­lice al­so of­fered sup­port.


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