Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice in the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion will be mon­i­tor­ing oth­er ar­eas in the com­mu­ni­ty where they be­lieve il­le­gal cam­eras be­ing used by crim­i­nal gangs have been in­stalled to mon­i­tor their move­ments.

 Snr Supt Richard Smith, who leads the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, said they would be mov­ing ag­gres­sive­ly to “unin­stall” any ad­di­tion­al il­le­gal equip­ment.

Gang­sters try­ing to get ad­vance no­tice on the move­ments of pa­trols and po­lice ex­er­cis­es of the of­fi­cers will now be at a dis­ad­van­tage, Smith said, as he vowed to dis­man­tle cam­eras in­stalled by gang mem­bers to mon­i­tor law en­force­ment. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia last night, Smith said he was aware of the ur­gency of the sit­u­a­tion of gang mem­bers us­ing their own CCTV cam­eras to mon­i­tor po­lice. 

Yes­ter­day, it was re­port­ed that crim­i­nals es­tab­lished their own se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras at strate­gic lo­ca­tions in Monte Grande, Tu­na­puna, Bas­an­ta Trace, St John’s Road, St Au­gus­tine. Po­lice seized 23 de­vices that were dis­man­tled af­ter a T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­pa­ny (TTEC) crew un­cov­ered the scheme. The net­work of cam­eras was mon­i­tor­ing three sta­tions in east Trinidad.

Ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion re­vealed that a raid had al­so been car­ried out in Bangladesh, St Joseph, where a quan­ti­ty of elec­tron­ic de­vices were al­so con­fis­cat­ed.

The lo­ca­tion is be­lieved to be a mon­i­tor­ing hub since it was said to have been out­fit­ted with two large tele­vi­sion screens, which showed a to­tal of 62 cam­eras record­ing live feeds of the three po­lice sta­tions in the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing the St Joseph, Tu­na­puna, and the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tions.

It is be­lieved the sur­veil­lance equip­ment was in­stalled over a pe­ri­od of time by a crim­i­nal gang op­er­at­ing out of east Trinidad.

Smith said the in­ci­dent was ev­i­dence of the need for law en­force­ment to take on a more proac­tive role in dis­man­tling and dis­rupt­ing or­gan­ised crime ac­tiv­i­ties. 

Smith, ex­plain­ing the il­le­gal op­er­a­tion, said, “It’s not a sit­u­a­tion where crim­i­nals were us­ing our own closed-cir­cuit feeds to their ad­van­tage. Rather, they in­stalled their own se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras to get an ear­ly warn­ing of when po­lice were in the neigh­bour­hood to flush their drugs or pass them on to a neigh­bour to hide. Even still, this is a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion, and we are very aware of how it is be­ing used, so we will be deal­ing with it.”

He al­so urged the pub­lic to con­tact the po­lice in sit­u­a­tions where they sus­pect there are unau­tho­rised or il­le­gal cam­era con­nec­tions in their neigh­bour­hoods. 

The is­sue of crim­i­nals us­ing cam­eras to their ad­van­tage is not new, as in 2017, it was re­port­ed that po­lice re­moved six CCTV cam­eras from Tem­ple Street, El So­cor­ro, which were be­lieved to have been in­stalled by a known crim­i­nal.

Po­lice sources be­lieve that qual­i­fied tech­ni­cians have been com­plic­it in in­stalling cam­eras and sys­tems for them to mon­i­tor pa­trols. 

Who in­stalled the il­le­gal cam­eras for the crim­i­nal el­e­ment?

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira yes­ter­day ques­tioned who in­stalled the il­le­gal cam­eras for the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

“Who put it up there in the first place?” he asked. “This must be an in­side job.” He al­so felt the young men on the street “eat­ing Bour­bon bis­cuits” could not be be­hind this.

“So it has to be some­body else, some­body with more mon­ey, or more peo­ple with more mon­ey. The peo­ple who are call­ing the shots are the transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime over­lords.”

Figueira said, “I feel like we took about five more steps back­wards be­cause half of the cam­eras that the po­lice in­stalled don’t work. This al­so puts their crime-fight­ing ef­forts and their lives in jeop­ardy be­cause every time they try to make a move, the crim­i­nals are al­ready four steps ahead.”

Po­lice, he said, need to up­grade their weapons and tech­nol­o­gy.

The crim­i­nol­o­gist said, based on what tran­spired and what we are go­ing through as a coun­try, that to­day (Sat­ur­day) would have been the day he spoke to us.

He said the politi­cians must take the blame for the sit­u­a­tion that cit­i­zens are now fac­ing.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said cor­rupt prac­tices by some tech­ni­cians were un­ac­cept­able and should be root­ed out.

He warned that such im­pro­pri­ety posed a threat to the pub­lic at large.

“We are en­gag­ing in prac­tices that com­pro­mise na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty to make a lit­tle ex­tra mon­ey on the side. Even­tu­al­ly, this will come back and hurt us, some­times in a very per­son­al way. You’re talk­ing about tech­ni­cians en­gag­ing in cor­rupt prac­tices, mak­ing a lit­tle ex­tra mon­ey on the side, but they’re com­pro­mis­ing the State’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture in so do­ing.”

Crim­i­nals took ad­van­tage of laps­es in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty–Grif­fith

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as “un­for­tu­nate but un­sur­pris­ing,” not­ing that crim­i­nals took ad­van­tage of laps­es in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. 

Grif­fith, who has been open­ly crit­i­cal of the State’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strate­gies, said, “This same thing these crim­i­nal el­e­ments are us­ing ... they have set up an op­er­a­tional com­mand cen­tre to be one step ahead of the po­lice. This is ex­act­ly what we had from 2018 to 2021: an op­er­a­tional com­mand cen­tre, tak­ing a feed of all cam­eras of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) to mon­i­tor what the crim­i­nals were do­ing. 

“You’ve shut down the ad­van­tage law en­force­ment agen­cies had, and the crim­i­nals set up the same thing you shut down.”

Dur­ing a 2022 sit­ting of the Low­er House, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds re­port­ed that there were 1,796 CCTV cam­eras across TT, of which 1,123 were ful­ly func­tion­al. 

Top cop, min­is­ter mum

Both Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day avoid­ed ques­tions from the me­dia fol­low­ing a prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the po­lice Sports and Fam­i­ly Day. 

The event, which com­mem­o­rat­ed the 101st an­nu­al Sports and Fam­i­ly Day at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James, sought to unite dif­fer­ent units and di­vi­sions of the TTPS in the spir­it of friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion and ca­ma­raderie. 

Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who spent most of the event ob­serv­ing the march past for­ma­tions and pre­sen­ta­tions from dif­fer­ent arms un­der a tent just op­po­site the recre­ation field, did not ac­cept any ques­tions from the me­dia. 

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds told re­porters that he would re­turn but was lat­er seen leav­ing the train­ing grounds. 

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Hinds lat­er that evening, just af­ter 7 pm, but he asked that the re­porter con­tact him an hour-and-a-half lat­er.

“You got me at a very bad time. I am in a meet­ing right now,” Hinds said.