Jensen La Vende

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the ori­gin of the voice notes cir­cu­lat­ing, warn­ing of threats to schools yes­ter­day as well as threats to bomb malls over last week­end and if need be will be us­ing the as­sis­tance of the Unit­ed States in track­ing the crim­i­nal/s re­spon­si­ble for the voice notes.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's me­dia press brief­ing Sgt Daniel Her­nan­dez, of the Cy­ber Crime Unit, said all so­cial me­dia plat­forms used in T&T were US based and through the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty and the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­quests could be made to re­ceive in­for­ma­tion from these agen­cies once they fall with­in the re­mit of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Her­nan­dez added that at this time the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the threats were "on­go­ing" and "we have reached a par­tic­u­lar point and hope­ful­ly the in­for­ma­tion will be re­layed to you all on what has tran­spired."

Al­so at yes­ter­day's brief­ing was pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer, ASP Micheal Pierre, who stat­ed that it was a crime to use a tele­phone to ha­rass, cause an­noy­ance, in­con­ve­nience and un­nec­es­sary pan­ic to an­oth­er per­son. These of­fences can car­ry fines be­tween $50,000 to $100,000 and jail time of two to three years.

Pierre added that the po­lice yes­ter­day put mea­sures in place as it re­lat­ed to the threats made against schools in a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Re­gard­ing the dis­cov­ery of a grenade on Tues­day, Pierre said it was a ma­jor con­cern for the Po­lice Ser­vice along with oth­er weapons in the hands of the crim­i­nal el­e­ments and as such the po­lice were mon­i­tor­ing all sit­u­a­tions.

"These re­ports are of in­ter­est to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty so it in­volves the min­istry as well, not just the po­lice, but we as the po­lice will do every­thing in our pow­er to deal with the sit­u­a­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the oth­er agen­cies," Pierre said.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue of so­cial me­dia threats, Her­nan­dez said there was no need for the threat to be made twice and from the same de­vice for po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate and lay charges.

He ad­vised that any threat made via so­cial me­dia plat­forms should be re­port­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to the po­lice. He added he was aware of a Face­book threat made against a woman and her daugh­ter af­ter the woman failed to re­spond to state­ments made by a man and the mat­ter was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said there were no se­cu­ri­ty breach­es at schools yes­ter­day and fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry of­fi­cials and ACP Wayne Boyd, po­lice of­fi­cers were con­tin­u­ing their pa­trols of schools and a list of all sec­ondary schools had been sent to the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre.