Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15,600 worth of ca­ble was stolen from the Trinidad Oil­field Sup­plies Lim­it­ed (TOSL) com­pound in Mara­bel­la in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day.

The theft was dis­cov­ered around 8.30 am on Sat­ur­day, when a fa­cil­i­ties su­per­vi­sor ar­rived at the com­pound along Maraj Av­enue and ob­served that about 30 feet of 224mm sin­gle-arm ca­ble, which had been wrapped around a ca­ble wheel at the rear of the com­pound, was miss­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the com­pound had been se­cured the pre­vi­ous af­ter­noon (April 2), around 5 pm, with a lone se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer on du­ty at the time.

CCTV footage re­viewed by the su­per­vi­sor re­port­ed­ly showed three men dressed in dark cloth­ing en­ter­ing the com­pound around 12.15 am on Sat­ur­day. The footage al­leged­ly cap­tured them re­mov­ing the ca­ble and ex­it­ing through the rear of the com­pound, which runs par­al­lel to the San Fer­nan­do By­pass. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said fur­ther checks re­vealed that a chain-link fence had been cut to fa­cil­i­tate en­try and ex­it.

Po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the scene, con­duct­ed ini­tial ob­ser­va­tions and are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.

In an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent, of­fi­cers of the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (SDTF) ar­rest­ed a man af­ter al­leged­ly dis­cov­er­ing co­caine on him dur­ing a pa­trol in San Fer­nan­do in the ear­ly hours of Sat­ur­day.

Around 2.35 am, of­fi­cers on mo­bile pa­trol along Ja­madar Street stopped and searched a man and re­port­ed­ly found a trans­par­ent plas­tic bag con­cealed in the crotch area of his box­er shorts. The bag con­tained mul­ti­ple small­er pack­ets la­belled “spade” and “pur­ple dol­phin,” each hold­ing a quan­ti­ty of white pow­der sus­pect­ed to be co­caine, with a to­tal weight of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17 grams. The man was ar­rest­ed and tak­en in­to cus­tody as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

Mean­while, SDTF of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a sep­a­rate rov­ing ex­er­cise across the west­ern area of the South­ern Di­vi­sion be­tween 7 pm and 10.30 pm on Sat­ur­day, tar­get­ing traf­fic of­fences, known drug blocks, gov­ern­ment build­ings and busi­ness­es.

The op­er­a­tion, co­or­di­nat­ed by se­nior of­fi­cers, in­volved mul­ti­ple stop-and-search checks across San Fer­nan­do and Gas­par­il­lo. Of­fi­cers searched sev­er­al ve­hi­cles, in­di­vid­u­als and pa­trons at bars, with four peo­ple sub­ject­ed to field so­bri­ety tests, all of whom were with­in the pre­scribed lim­its.

A to­tal of ten stop-and-search forms were com­plet­ed, two fixed penal­ty no­tices were is­sued, and one man was ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion of an of­fen­sive weapon, iden­ti­fied as a cut­lass. He has since been processed pend­ing fur­ther ac­tion.

—KEVON FELMINE