Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice da­ta be­tween Jan­u­ary and May showed that bur­glar­ies and rob­beries are on the rise in the To­ba­go, Cen­tral, North-Cen­tral, North East­ern and Port of Spain Di­vi­sions.

In T&T home in­va­sions are not de­fined or out­lined as a spe­cif­ic crime. What is un­der­stood as home in­va­sions can be de­scribed in two ways de­pend­ing on what time they are com­mit­ted.

A po­lice source ex­plained that bur­glar­ies are com­mit­ted when some­one breaks in­to a house to com­mit an ar­restable of­fence be­tween 8 pm and 5 am. On the oth­er hand, rob­beries can hap­pen at any time.

The most sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in bur­glar­ies was ob­served in the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion where there was a 31 per cent spike com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.

The Cen­tral Di­vi­sion had a 21 per cent in­crease, while the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, which cov­ers a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the East-West Cor­ri­dor, ex­pe­ri­enced a 14 per cent in­crease.

In the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, there was an 11 per cent in­crease, while the North East­ern Di­vi­sion saw a nine per cent in­crease.

Po­lice said res­i­dents in rur­al or se­mi-rur­al ar­eas are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble be­cause of the rel­a­tive­ly long dis­tance be­tween neigh­bours. How­ev­er, the trend is al­so seen in res­i­den­tial ar­eas.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds ac­knowl­edged the trau­ma cit­i­zens face with home in­va­sions. He said he met with the Chief of De­fence Staff Dar­ryl Daniel to dis­cuss the is­sue of home in­va­sions.

Re­fer­ring to a home in­va­sion in Aranguez around that time, Hinds sym­pa­thised with the vic­tims, in­clud­ing a 15-year-old boy, who was beat­en by the at­tack­ers.

“This mat­ter was cen­tral to our dis­cus­sions, the ques­tion of so-called home in­va­sions, and we un­der­stand full well the trau­ma and the stress, the pain and the abuse,” he said.

“We saw how they beat that 15-year-old boy, and the Com­mis­sion­er out­lined her plans and the Chief of De­fence Staff out­lined his plans in sup­port of the Po­lice Ser­vice in deal­ing with this.”

Months af­ter that as­sur­ance, 23-year-old Re­pub­lic Bank em­ploy­ee Ta­fari Charles was gunned down when ban­dits in­vad­ed his Pe­tit Val­ley. Charles was shot twice when he at­tempt­ed to con­front the in­trud­ers.

Home in­va­sions have in­creased con­sis­tent­ly over the years.

In De­cem­ber 2018, re­peat of­fend­er Ted­dy Singh was in­volved in a home in­va­sion at a house on Dump Road, Ari­ma. A neigh­bour heard the com­mo­tion and alert­ed the po­lice who vis­it­ed the scene but were shot at. Po­lice re­turned fire killing Singh and two oth­er men who were at the scene.

Singh had es­caped from po­lice cus­tody at the Ari­ma Mag­is­trate’s Court in May that year.

Of­fi­cers in the Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit (GIU) sus­pect the lat­est cas­es of home in­va­sions are part of a de­lib­er­ate push to get quick cash and valu­ables. How­ev­er, they said crim­i­nals have be­come in­creas­ing­ly fo­cused on who they tar­get, of­ten trav­el­ling miles away from their homes.

Most sus­pects held in home in­va­sions are not from the ar­eas where they com­mit crimes. A po­lice source said con­fi­den­tial in­for­mants sug­gest­ed that gang lead­ers are di­rect­ing their foot sol­diers to com­mit home in­va­sions in neigh­bour­hoods well away from their own.

Such crimes re­quire prepa­ra­tions, with crim­i­nals do­ing “stake­outs” to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the rou­tines of their vic­tims and pos­si­ble es­cape routes af­ter com­mit­ting the crime.

“We’ve no­ticed that there is def­i­nite­ly a lot of plan­ning that goes in­to these kinds of ac­tiv­i­ties,” a po­lice source said.

“There have been cas­es where farm­ers re­turned home from mak­ing de­liv­er­ies of pro­duce and have cash on them when the ban­dits strike. This isn’t by co­in­ci­dence.

“We al­ways urge peo­ple to be vig­i­lant when re­turn­ing home and un­for­tu­nate­ly a lot of peo­ple fall in­to rou­tines that can eas­i­ly be an­tic­i­pat­ed.”

The trend of out­siders ven­tur­ing in­to dis­tant com­mu­ni­ties was raised dur­ing a po­lice town hall meet­ing in Char­lieville last Oc­to­ber when res­i­dents com­plained that strangers were seen ob­serv­ing near­by busi­ness­es. In re­sponse, then Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Supt Miguel Mon­trichard urged land­lords to per­form back­ground checks on prospec­tive ten­ants and keep a pho­to­copy of their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards.

Ef­fec­tive­ly tack­ling home in­va­sions of­ten re­quires more than mon­i­tor­ing strangers.

A cru­cial as­pect of crime-fight­ing is a quick re­sponse to emer­gen­cies, which can be a chal­lenge in rel­a­tive­ly re­mote ar­eas that are ac­ces­si­ble by mul­ti­ple back­roads and dirt tracks.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the scene of a quadru­ple po­lice killing in St Au­gus­tine last Thurs­day, head of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Richard Smith said there were 11 cas­es of home in­va­sions in the di­vi­sion with an up­surge in Arou­ca.

He said three sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and charged which led to a re­duc­tion in crimes in that area.

Smith said the for­ma­tion of a spe­cial 11-man an­ti-rob­bery squad has al­so yield­ed re­sults.

The team is part of Op­er­a­tion Hur­ri­cane which was launched on March 18.

“Thus far they have ar­rest­ed 82 peo­ple for most­ly rob­beries and car thefts,” he said.

“In one week they ar­rest­ed 11 peo­ple but the prob­lem is the more we ar­rest the more they are spring­ing up.”

The North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion ex­tends from St Joseph in the west to Bon Air in the east and is con­nect­ed by the East­ern Main Road, the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

While po­lice re­sponse is an im­por­tant part of fight­ing home in­va­sions, res­i­dents have been en­cour­aged to form com­mu­ni­ty net­works to alert each oth­er of strangers lurk­ing in the neigh­bour­hood and to form What­sApp groups to quick­ly share in­for­ma­tion on crimes.