RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing re­mains a ma­jor chal­lenge for po­lice of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion. How­ev­er, peo­ple in­volved will be hunt­ed down, ar­rest­ed and charged.

So said ASP Murchi­son Fitz­worme on Thurs­day dur­ing the week­ly me­dia brief­ing host­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

While not giv­ing a num­ber of peo­ple ar­rest­ed so far for il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, Fitz­worme as­sured that there were sev­er­al peo­ple who were held.

He added that the po­lice have part­nered with the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force on the is­sue of quar­ry­ing and have been net­work­ing with oth­er di­vi­sions, in par­tic­u­lar North­ern Di­vi­sion, “with the amount of per­sons held from there.”

“Peo­ple come from as far as Cen­tral Di­vi­sion to come to East­ern Di­vi­sion to get in­volved in the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties,” Fitz­worme said.

He al­so linked the ac­tiv­i­ty with crim­i­nal gangs and the num­ber of peo­ple go­ing in­to the dis­trict.

“But we are tar­get­ing them us­ing ex­er­cis­es, and in­tel­li­gence, and get­ting in­tel from so­ci­ety to treat with those is­sues,” Fitz­worme said.

“Our in­tel­li­gence has iden­ti­fied sev­er­al ar­eas in the Va­len­cia and Matu­ra dis­tricts as places where il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is be­ing car­ried out. As a re­sult, the di­vi­sion in its ef­fort to erad­i­cate the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing has part­nered with sev­er­al agen­cies in­clud­ing the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force with the aim of erad­i­cat­ing the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.”

An­oth­er chal­lenge iden­ti­fied by the ASP is the dras­tic in­crease in the pop­u­la­tion of squat­ting ar­eas, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Va­len­cia, San­gre Grande and Matu­ra.

“These were once un­in­hab­it­ed ar­eas, but now many per­sons many un­known to the di­vi­sion have en­tered. These in­di­vid­u­als cre­at­ed a group of roads and tracks to en­gage crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Fitz­worme said.

He, how­ev­er, made it known that the di­vi­sion’s in­ten­tion is to re­duce il­le­gal squat­ting, adding they have em­barked on a mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach.

“So this fa­cil­i­tates the high prob­a­bil­i­ty for il­le­gal im­ports of nar­cotics, con­tra­band and even il­le­gal im­mi­grants. As such, the di­vi­sion has im­ple­ment­ed a coastal pa­trol and strate­gic ex­er­cis­es which has re­sult­ed in the seizures of sev­er­al firearms and a large quan­ti­ties of nar­cotics, as well as sev­er­al im­mi­grants who at­tempt­ed to en­ter the coun­try il­le­gal­ly,” Fitz­worme said.

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