An­na-Lisa Paul

Just like there are gangs who spe­cialise in the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal firearms, nar­cotics and peo­ple, there are gangs that spe­cialise in home in­va­sions us­ing as­sault and bat­tery.

While sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) do not con­firm an up­surge in home in­va­sions since the start of the year, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob yes­ter­day said they had not­ed an in­crease in such in­ci­dents along the East/West Cor­ri­dor with­in re­cent weeks.

“There are gangs now that are ac­tu­al­ly us­ing that as a gang pro­file. There are gangs or­gan­is­ing them­selves to go and break in­to peo­ple’s prop­er­ty and they must bring back cer­tain things. They al­so do things to sig­nal or sym­bol­ise that they have done the deed,” Ja­cobs said, not­ing some gangs use the acts as an ini­ti­a­tion process.

“That is the prob­lem we are hav­ing. Our gangs who are op­er­at­ing now en­ter the field of pure crim­i­nal­i­ty…that is what tak­ing place.”

How­ev­er, he as­sured, “We have, in fact, dis­man­tled sev­er­al such groups for the year so far.”

Re­fer­ring to the lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty and sever­i­ty of some of the at­tacks, Ja­cob said, “That is some­thing we have been see­ing in the ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try.”

He said au­thor­i­ties had to con­sid­er why peo­ple feel a sense of de­pri­va­tion to the point where they have to hurt cit­i­zens and take away their earn­ings and wealth.

“Per­sons are be­hav­ing as if they have some­thing against so­ci­ety and it tells us some­thing about what is be­ing bred in the minds of the young peo­ple.”

De­scrib­ing this type of be­hav­iour as “crim­i­nal rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion,” he added, “There are some per­sons us­ing re­li­gious books to jus­ti­fy the be­hav­iour of some of peo­ple, but what is hap­pen­ing is that ba­sic prin­ci­ples of crim­i­no­log­i­cal the­o­ry is be­ing played out.”

Ja­cob said when el­der­ly per­sons are at­tacked in their home, tied up and bru­talised be­fore be­ing killed in some in­stances, it begs the ques­tion of why the crim­i­nals do not sim­ply rob per­sons alone.

Ad­mit­ting law en­force­ment could im­prove its crime-fight­ing ef­forts, Ja­cob ad­vised home­own­ers sus­pi­cious about ac­tiv­i­ties out­side their homes to con­tact the po­lice first.

Re­fer­ring to a re­cent in­va­sion in Tu­na­puna where ban­dits turned on a tap out­side to get the home’s oc­cu­pants to open up so they could gain en­try – and end­ed up us­ing a ham­mer to beat one of the women in the head – Ja­cob urged, “Call the po­lice. Do not go out­side. All of those are tricks to lure you out. Call 999 to re­port it to the po­lice and then call your sta­tion dis­trict. You al­so need to alert your neigh­bours too be­cause uni­ty is strength.”

Point­ing out that ban­dits al­so seize op­por­tu­ni­ties to dart in­to dri­ve­ways as own­ers wait for elec­tric gates to close, he said CCTV cam­eras are im­por­tant tools that as­sist in keep­ing peo­ple safe and al­so help of­fi­cers to ap­pre­hend per­pe­tra­tors.

He said the TTPS had al­so re­cent­ly re­ceived per­mis­sion from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to split the North­ern Di­vi­sion in­to two – each with its own com­mand­ing of­fi­cer – as part of the ef­fort to im­prove polic­ing ef­forts and re­duce crime over­all.

He said ad­di­tion­al equip­ment and man­pow­er re­sources had been as­signed to the two di­vi­sions with­in re­cent days to “help of­fi­cers with what is hap­pen­ing there.” Ja­cob said the North­ern Di­vi­sion’s ju­ris­dic­tion spanned from Mt Lam­bert to Mara­cas, St Joseph and all the way down to Va­len­cia in­clud­ing San Raphael and Pi­ar­co. He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 440,000 peo­ple re­side with­in that catch­ment area and de­pend on the TTPS for pro­tec­tion.

“We want the pop­u­la­tion to know that we have no­ticed the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem for North­ern Di­vi­sion and we have since got the ap­proval for the pi­lot project which is cur­rent­ly un­der­way…zon­ing and man­ag­ing what is hap­pen­ing. We are not sit­ting down and do­ing noth­ing.”

Snr Supt of the North­ern Di­vi­sion North, Christo­pher Pa­ponette, echoed Ja­cob’s com­ments, as he too con­firmed the in­crease in home in­va­sions along the East/West Cor­ri­dor.

Point­ing out that when one of­fi­cer makes a wrong de­ci­sion or bad call in re­spond­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic seek­ing help for any rea­son, he said this brings the TTPS in­to dis­re­pute and make the pub­lic dis­trust­ing of the po­lice. He said cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing at the Po­lice Acad­e­my was among the pri­or­i­ty area for fo­cused train­ing.