Geisha Kow­lessar

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in east Trinidad has grown from a fes­ter­ing sore in­to a can­cer­ous mass, suf­fo­cat­ing le­git­i­mate busi­ness­men, who in many in­stances, are be­ing forced to pay hefty pro­tec­tion tax. In oth­er cas­es, al­so re­vealed by head of East­ern Di­vi­sion, Se­nior Supt Mar­garet Samp­son-Browne, le­gal busi­ness­men were al­so pres­sured in­to "de­liv­er­ing" truck­loads of grav­el to il­le­gal quar­ries, in ex­change for the "safe­guard" of their ve­hi­cles. Many of the il­le­gal quar­ries, the se­nior cop added, op­er­at­ed un­der a host of "ghost com­pa­nies" to elude de­tec­tion. De­clar­ing that she was "hell-bent" on shut­ting down il­le­gal quar­ries which had "tak­en over" the rur­al east­ern town, Samp­son-Browne has al­so de­clared "war" on er­rant po­lice of­fi­cers who may be in­volved in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

In an in­ter­view at San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, Samp­son-Browne said a spe­cial squad of East­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice, work­ing close­ly with the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (CIU) and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau, had im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures to "dras­ti­cal­ly re­duce" il­le­gal quar­ry­ing by the end of the year. "We are re­lent­less­ly col­lect­ing da­ta, and by the end of the year there will be a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in East­ern Di­vi­sion, if not be­fore," Samp­son-Browne said. Among the team of of­fi­cers were In­sps Phillip, Ra­mai, Joseph, Roy and Sgt Bev­er­ly Paul. Samp­son-Browne, who as­sumed of­fice last Feb­ru­ary, said she had "in­her­it­ed" the prob­lem of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. "Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is a thorn in our sides at East­ern Di­vi­sion. There are peo­ple do­ing le­gal quar­ry­ing, and very next to that is il­le­gal quar­ry­ing." She said be­cause of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of in­for­ma­tion po­lice were gath­er­ing, there had been hasty at­tempts to "cov­er up" by those in­volved.

"It may ap­pear there has been an in­crease in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. "We are get­ting a wider per­spec­tive how il­le­gal quar­ries op­er­ate: the times they are op­er­at­ing, the ve­hi­cles they use and the com­pa­nies they al­leged­ly op­er­ate un­der," Samp­son-Browne said. Part of the strat­e­gy of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, the se­nior cop said, de­pend­ed heav­i­ly on sur­veil­lance meth­ods and in­for­ma­tion-gath­er­ing, which would then lead to ar­rests. "We have the names of peo­ple who are said to be ex­tort­ing mon­ey from le­gal busi­ness­men," Samp­son-Browne said. Among the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered, she added, were names of po­lice of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly linked to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. "I am not go­ing to hold a can­dle for any­body. There are names of po­lice of­fi­cers we are aware of and we are ad­dress­ing that sit­u­a­tion," Samp­son-Browne as­sured. She de­clined to an­swer if any of the im­pli­cat­ed of­fi­cers were as­signed to East­ern Di­vi­sion.

Vow­ing to be "re­lent­less" in weed­ing out rogue cops," Samp­son-Browne said the land­scape had been "hideous­ly scared" by the dai­ly rip­ping away of large chunks of earth. "I hate a dis­hon­est per­son. I more so hate a dis­hon­est po­lice of­fi­cer, be­cause they are not trained to pro­tect and serve per­sons who are do­ing wrong things, and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is one of them. "When you take a view of Va­len­cia, there are huge lakes of wa­ter where the earth once was, and that has re­sult­ed in se­vere flood­ing," Samp­son-Browne said. To ef­fec­tive­ly erad­i­cate the scourge of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, how­ev­er, Samp­son-Browne called on the com­mu­ni­ty to work hand-in-hand with the po­lice. "We can­not bring a clo­sure to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. It has to be an ex­change of strength.

"It has to be a show of force by the po­lice and sup­port­ive strength by the com­mu­ni­ty," Samp­son-Browne said. Al­le­vi­at­ing fears that in­for­ma­tion passed on to the po­lice would be treat­ed in strict con­fi­dence, Samp­son-Browne said her of­fi­cers were will­ing to "march in­to hell for a heav­en­ly cause. "We have been hear­ing of peo­ple giv­ing in­for­ma­tion, and that in­for­ma­tion comes back to them by the same per­sons who they give in­for­ma­tion about. "But we are go­ing to see tan­gi­ble re­spons­es be­cause we are work­ing on the ground and un­der the ground to bring some mea­sure of re­lief, be­cause every­body is sup­posed to ex­ist in an en­vi­ron­ment that is safe, whether re­al or per­ceived."