Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers say there’s no ev­i­dence to sup­port the state­ment by Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj that peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent are spe­cif­ic tar­gets for crim­i­nals.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence in San Juan on Wednes­day, Ma­haraj claimed that ur­ban youth along the East-West cor­ri­dor are tar­get­ing peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent in Aranguez and across the coun­try.

While his com­ments proved to be fierce­ly po­lar­is­ing amongst the pop­u­la­tion, Sr Supt Michael Pierre and As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Col­lis Hazel both yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia it is not root­ed in fact.

ACP Hazel, who is based in To­ba­go now, said when he worked in Port-of-Spain, that was not a trend he saw.

“I don’t think that ban­dits out­side here try to pounce on any per­pe­tra­tor they can’t get wealth from, and I don’t think they in any way tar­get one spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple, so once they can get ben­e­fit out of any­body, there’s no colour, creed, race or re­li­gion for these mer­ci­less peo­ple, so I would not agree with the pun­dit at all with that as­sess­ment.”

ACP Hazel not­ed that To­ba­go yes­ter­day saw the mur­der of a man of African de­scent.

“So, I don’t think they busi­ness about what you are, what they are look­ing for is wealth and who­ev­er has it, they will take it from them.”

Mean­while, at a Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Sr Supt Pierre al­so dis­agreed with the pun­dit’s claim.

“I think that the would-be crim­i­nals or op­por­tunis­tic crim­i­nals tar­get any­one who makes them­selves a soft tar­get, so it is not gen­der spe­cif­ic or eth­nic spe­cif­ic.”

Pierre said while the TTPS’ Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch dis­ag­gre­gates po­lice re­ports based on eth­nic­i­ty, he’s seen noth­ing to back up the pun­dit’s state­ment.

“But what I would tell you al­so is that we are a mul­ti-eth­nic and mul­ti-re­li­gious so­ci­ety, and when you take dif­fer­ent re­gions in­to con­sid­er­a­tion you may have more of one eth­nic group liv­ing in one par­tic­u­lar area, so to just zone it in one way, you have to be more ex­plic­it in terms of how you eval­u­ate.”

Sr Supt Pierre, who over­sees the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, said he does not see any one racial group be­ing preyed on in the dis­trict. Nor does he see any group of peo­ple mak­ing them­selves so-called soft­er tar­gets com­pared to oth­er racial groups.

He ex­plained what “soft tar­get” means.

“For ex­am­ple, a per­son walk­ing on the street, walk­ing with a cell phone, fo­cus­ing on the cell phone rather than their sur­round­ings, then you won’t be aware of that per­son who is ap­proach­ing you to snatch your phone. For home in­va­sions, in some in­stances peo­ple leave their door wide open while they are at home and in terms of light­ing sys­tems, if you’re look­ing at pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, one would tend to have it well-lit and even with cam­era sys­tems or neigh­bour­hood watch groups and when these things don’t ex­ist, those per­sons present them­selves as soft tar­gets.”

Mean­while TTPS pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer, In­spec­tor Michelle Lewis, was asked if the lengthy process in ac­quir­ing a le­gal firearm leads to peo­ple, in par­tic­u­lar busi­ness own­ers, be­com­ing soft tar­gets.

“No, I would not say that process is con­tribut­ing to that. It is a process that has to be fol­lowed through, it is a process ac­cord­ing to writ­ten pro­ce­dure and it is not new, and we un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion that we are in, the cli­mate that ex­ists with­in the coun­try in re­la­tion to crime and how it im­pacts per­sons neg­a­tive­ly and we are all con­cerned, but it is very im­por­tant al­so that when a firearm is is­sued to some­one that it ends up in the hands of the per­son who will be re­spon­si­ble in do­ing so, so the process must be thor­ough.”

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er for the North-East Di­vi­sion, Wayne Mys­tar, de­clined to com­ment on Pun­dit Ma­haraj’s state­ment.