An­na-Lisa Paul

Even as a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of ex­tor­tion and cor­rup­tion by of­fi­cers with­in the East­ern Di­vi­sion con­tin­ues, sev­er­al busi­ness­men are ac­cus­ing of­fi­cers of not on­ly crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty but of us­ing in­tim­ida­to­ry tac­tics.

A probe was launched last week by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, af­ter of­fi­cers were al­leged­ly shown in video on so­cial me­dia steal­ing mon­ey from one busi­ness.

A vic­tim has claimed the mon­ey was be­ing ex­tort­ed from him by of­fi­cers, but po­lice have coun­tered that the po­lice were in­volved in a le­git­i­mate po­lice ex­er­cise.

Speak­ing un­der con­di­tion of anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, sev­er­al fed-up men shared some in­sights in­to just what the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been fac­ing.

“This cor­rup­tion has been go­ing on now for five years, as it was the Chi­nese busi­ness­men who had been pay­ing tax first,” some busi­ness­men told Guardian Me­dia.

They re­vealed just how it start­ed, not­ing they are now hop­ing to bring an end to the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties by those who are al­leged­ly pro­tect­ing and serv­ing their own in­ter­ests.

“The po­lice know we have the games so they come and lime around to see what go­ing on. Some­times they will talk to the Chi­nese and say they have to pay them tax.”

They said while the Chi­nese own­ers had ini­tial­ly agreed and were pay­ing as “nor­mal,” the sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed with­in the past year.

“They were go­ing with that un­til it reach a stage now that they start to get greedy and they start to lock down on the Play Whe, so when they lock down now...they com­ing and seiz­ing all the as­sets, every­thing, down to the bar mon­ey, every sin­gle dol­lar,” the busi­ness­man claimed.

They con­tin­ued, “When they do this, they not check­ing it in front of any­body. Plus, they not com­ing with a search war­rant, they just tak­ing the mon­ey and they gone with it. And they lock­ing up who­ev­er they see op­er­at­ing the ma­chine, as they claim­ing it is il­le­gal gam­bling.”

The busi­ness­men al­leged that in ad­di­tion to the tax be­ing col­lect­ed by of­fi­cers, which usu­al­ly amount­ed to $10,000 per month, this was re­cent­ly dou­bled to $20,000 per month.

Re­fer­ring to the per­sons of­ten de­tained dur­ing al­leged po­lice raids to crack down on il­le­gal gam­bling in the dis­trict, the busi­ness­men re­lat­ed, “When they lock the girls up and seize mon­ey...they writ­ing what­ev­er they want. Some­times is $20,000, cause they tak­ing the bar mon­ey and the games mon­ey too...so they mark­ing what­ev­er they want.

“It have a lot of doc­u­ments we see and ob­ject­ed to when we see the mon­ey they seize. Even the girls say it not true, we had more than that but we can’t do any­thing about it. It is our word against them and if we go in court, no­body would be­lieve it.”

The busi­ness­men re­vealed that dur­ing po­lice raids, of­fi­cers usu­al­ly de­mand $5,000 each to re­lease the Chi­nese and Venezue­lan girls and $2,000 for the lo­cal girls each.

They al­leged, “Down to the JP (Jus­tice of the Peace) and all had­da get a cut. The JP had to get $1,500 to sign for them to come out.

“Is a whole thing go­ing on in the sta­tion...them had­da get a cut too, or they would leave the girls in­side for two to three days be­fore they come to let you out.”

Asked why they con­tin­ued to op­er­ate the il­le­gal gam­bling ma­chines and face the al­leged ex­tor­tion, they an­swered, “We were al­lowed to re­open be­cause the po­lice told us we could go ahead and that noth­ing would hap­pen, as we had done pay the mon­ey and thing al­ready, so noth­ing would hap­pen.”

They al­so al­leged a se­nior of­fi­cer from San­gre Grande was op­er­at­ing a drug block along­side a Play Whe ma­chine.

“Is a lot of things go­ing on in Grande. Be­sides that, the same fel­las go­ing be­hind drug blocks and if they ain’t find noth­ing, they does pull out stuff and say look we find this...and when you say that’s not mine, they does tell you yes...you had­da give we a bag of weed or a gun,” they al­leged.

“We know a par­tic­u­lar per­son who said he had to give them the weed for them to let him go. And it have peo­ple who they go by, when they see mon­ey, they does take it.”