Twen­ty-two more Venezue­lan na­tion­als were ar­rest­ed af­ter be­ing caught dis­em­bark­ing from a boat in Beach Camp, Pa­lo Seco.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said around 8 am on Sun­day, of­fi­cers led by Se­nior Supt Bran­don- Kohn and ASP Pe­ter Ramdeen, In­sp Si­mon and Sgt Breedy went to Pa­lo Seco where they saw the Venezue­lans run­ning from Beach Camp to­wards James Street.

The Venezue­lans were ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Siparua Health Fa­cil­i­ty. They ranged from aged two to 50 years old. There were three teenagers in the group. They were all med­ical­ly ex­am­ined by Dr Dwaru­ca and then tak­en to the Erin Po­lice sta­tion. They are ex­pect­ed to be con­veyed to the Ch­aguara­mas Coast Guard Base.

Over the past few days 51 more mi­grants were picked up by po­lice.

De­spite an in­crease in pa­trols and the 24 hours radar, many Venezue­lans are still con­tin­u­ing to reach lo­cal shores as they flee hor­rif­ic con­di­tions in their home­land.

CoP: Wom­antra keeps get­ting facts wrong

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says is was sur­prised at a me­dia re­lease is­sued by Wom­antra, in which the NGO says there is si­lence by the TTPS on at­tacks on Venezue­lan women.

Re­spond­ing to an ar­ti­cle in a dai­ly news­pa­per yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said Wom­antra has once again got­ten its facts wrong.

He said Wom­antra men­tioned 484 com­plaints of sex­u­al as­sault by im­mi­grants over a six-year pe­ri­od and that there were no ar­rests by the TTPS.

He said, “The Eigh­teenth Re­port of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on In­quiry in­to the Treat­ment of Mi­grants with spe­cif­ic fo­cus on Rights to Ed­u­ca­tion, Em­ploy­ment and Pro­tec­tion from Sex­u­al Ex­ploita­tion states: “dur­ing the time pe­ri­od 2013 to 2019, out of 484 re­ports re­ceived, there were 57 charges”.

He said this very Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee Re­port high­light­ed the TTPS’ ef­forts by way of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

The JSC re­ports, he not­ed, recog­nised the launch of the Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment (SVD) which was cre­at­ed by the TTPS to pro­vide a cen­tral point for vic­tims of all forms of vi­o­lence. The SVD cov­ers the Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit, the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit, and the Sex­u­al Of­fences Unit.

Grif­fith said since the launch of the Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU) in Jan­u­ary 2020, the GB­VU have had sev­er­al meet­ings with Wom­antra. The GB­VU has al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in train­ings which Wom­antra of­fered.

He said, “I’m sur­prised they are crit­i­cis­ing and blam­ing the TTPS. While some NGOs do noth­ing else but put out me­dia re­leas­es to throw blame on oth­ers, the TTPS is re­spond­ing and per­form­ing. If Wom­antra thinks that we are silent on the mat­ter, it sim­ply means that they are not read­ing. We have done so many things to im­prove this as­pect of polic­ing – we have re­vamped the 999 and 555 sys­tem, brought on the Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trols (ERP), in­tro­duced the Po­lice App, formed the So­cial Me­dia Unit, and now we have on-line re­port­ing of crimes. But none of these was ever used by Wom­antra to as­sist us. In­stead of di­a­logue and com­mu­ni­ca­tion where­by we would have shown them their er­rors, they rush to do a me­dia re­lease filled with in­ac­cu­ra­cies. They have lots of in­for­ma­tion, re­ports from fam­i­ly mem­bers and vic­tims. But they have not shared any­thing with us, but they are quick to crit­i­cise.”

Grif­fith said he has been at the fore­front of at­tacks against women.

He said, “I was the one who led the raid when el­der­ly women were kept in cages in Arou­ca. I am the per­son who is go­ing af­ter these broth­els which are en­gaged in child pros­ti­tu­tion, child pornog­ra­phy, hu­man traf­fick­ing and abuse against women, in par­tic­u­lar women from South Amer­i­ca.

As to the re­cent at­tack of an 18-year-old Venezue­lan woman, the CoP says that two sus­pects are in cus­tody, one of them be­ing a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice­man.

Grif­fith sai the Sex­u­al Of­fences De­part­ment in­tends to net­work with both in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal agen­cies to elim­i­nate sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, in­clu­sive of sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion com­mit­ted against mi­grant vic­tims. He said com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the re­spec­tive Em­bassies were made in re­la­tion to mi­grant vic­tims.