Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice in the East­ern Di­vi­sion have been kept on their toes deal­ing with a se­ries of shoot­ings and killings in the last month. It was just three months ear­li­er that then East­ern Di­vi­sion Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ryan Khan ap­peared be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) in March and re­port­ed a 23 per cent drop in mur­ders at the time in the di­vi­sion.

But an in­crease in shoot­ings and mur­ders in the di­vi­sion over the last two weeks has stoked fears by both home­own­ers and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of a resur­gence in vi­o­lence. In late June, a re­put­ed un­der­world fig­ure was shot in a squat­ting set­tle­ment in the East­ern Di­vi­sion. One day lat­er, a man was shot in the right hand as he drove through a forest­ed part of Rio Claro.

The fol­low­ing night, two women and a man were shot near a par­lour in Robin­son Lane, Damarie Hill, San­gre Grande. Hours lat­er that night, 36-year-old Do­minic Cal­len­der alias “Sask­ie” was killed out­side his Sap­phire Dri­ve, KP Lands, Va­len­cia home. On the morn­ing of June 23, cousins, Sher­win Mac­Fall­en, 17, An­dre Mel­oney, 20, and Mal­colm Richard­son, 21, were gunned down by at­tack­ers who stormed the Men­doza Lane, Matu­ra home.

Rel­a­tives over­heard the gun­men de­mand­ing cash and gold as they went from room to room, ex­e­cut­ing the men. East­ern Di­vi­sion is the sec­ond largest of all ten po­lice di­vi­sions in T&T, ex­tend­ing from Matelot in the north to Rio Claro in the south, cov­er­ing the en­tire east coast of Trinidad.

Po­lice sources re­port­ed that as of June 24, there have been 21 mur­ders in the East­ern Di­vi­sion, com­pared to 19 for the same pe­ri­od in 2023. Da­ta from the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch show, how­ev­er, that the East­ern Di­vi­sion still has the sec­ond low­est mur­der toll and high­est crime de­tec­tion rate (63 per cent) of all ten di­vi­sions.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the di­vi­sion has had one of the high­est de­tec­tion rates, as then-di­vi­sion­al com­man­der Snr Supt Garth Nel­son re­ceived an award in 2017 for hav­ing a 53 per cent de­tec­tion rate back then. One se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer at­trib­uted the in­crease in crime in the East­ern Di­vi­sion to a rise in the num­ber of squat­ting set­tle­ments over the years.

The of­fi­cer said the il­le­gal clear­ing of state lands has pro­gres­sive­ly in­creased over the years in parts of San­gre Grande and Va­len­cia, with peo­ple of all back­grounds flock­ing to the area. “There are peo­ple of ques­tion­able back­grounds from all over com­ing to squat­ting ar­eas to hide out. What we’ve no­ticed is that these out­siders bring their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties with them and con­tin­ue in our di­vi­sion.”

One of­fi­cer in the East­ern Di­vi­sion said the un­reg­u­lat­ed clear­ing of land in squat­ting set­tle­ments to make un­of­fi­cial roads goes be­yond an en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sue, as a wind­ing net­work of dirt tracks has made it dif­fi­cult to ef­fec­tive­ly po­lice the com­mu­ni­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the LSA’s most re­cent re­search in 2019, there were a to­tal of 7,387 squat­ting struc­tures in com­mu­ni­ties in east­ern Trinidad, with 4,294 in Va­len­cia, 359 in Matu­ra, and 2,734 in San­gre Grande.  

Se­nior Supt vows to strength­en po­lice re­sponse

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view on Tues­day, the head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion, Act­ing Snr Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, said of­fi­cers were con­cerned over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of squat­ting sites be­ing used as havens or hide­outs for crim­i­nals. Guy-Al­leyne, who suc­ceed­ed Ryan Khan as head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion last month, said she was aware of the con­cerns raised about crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties at squat­ting sites and con­firmed that in­ves­ti­ga­tors were work­ing on sev­er­al leads. “Our in­tel­li­gence units have been gath­er­ing ev­i­dence, and ar­rests may be im­mi­nent. We are pay­ing at­ten­tion to what’s go­ing on in that area. We have our ears on the ground, and we have cer­tain in­for­ma­tion we are de­vel­op­ing in­to ev­i­dence to re­al­ly act on.” Guy-Al­leyne ac­knowl­edged that there would be a sense of un­ease and pan­ic among peo­ple in the di­vi­sion but vowed to en­sure a strength­ened po­lice re­sponse to the mur­ders and oth­er crimes to re­store or­der. 

LSA: No da­ta to sug­gest squat­ting sites more vul­ner­a­ble to crime

In 2010, the for­mer di­rec­tor of the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA), Dr Allen Sam­my, re­port­ed that there may be as many as 50,000 squat­ters liv­ing on state lands through­out the coun­try. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from then in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh dur­ing a 2022 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, Dr Sam­my said there may be a pos­si­ble cor­re­la­tion be­tween squat­ting ar­eas and the preva­lence of crime.

“Based on the re­ports you see in the news­pa­per, there is some sort of cor­re­la­tion be­tween what takes place in squat­ting ar­eas and crime, and we think there is a need for in­ter­ven­tion, and that is why the LSA is not on­ly about de­vel­op­ing squat­ting sites but is all about sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and com­mu­ni­ty im­prove­ment,” Dr Sam­my said.

How­ev­er, re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email on Wednes­day, of­fi­cials from the LSA said they did not have any da­ta to sug­gest that squat­ting sites were more vul­ner­a­ble to crime than oth­er ar­eas in the coun­try. The agency said it was con­tin­u­ing to work to­wards rais­ing the qual­i­ty of life for squat­ters,  which may con­tribute to law­less­ness.

“We are con­cerned with and work hard to as­suage any so­cio-eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties af­fect­ing squat­ters in Trinidad. Through our com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives, we seek to ad­dress in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies that might ex­ist in squat­ting sites, as well as de­vel­op the hu­man cap­i­tal in these ar­eas by im­prov­ing sub-stan­dard hous­ing and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ini­tia­tives that would help con­nect res­i­dents with the gov­ern­ment agen­cies and NGOs that pro­vide the as­sis­tance they re­quire.” The agency added that it has col­lab­o­rat­ed with the po­lice to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on crimes with­in squat­ting sites and would con­tin­ue co­op­er­at­ing with the au­thor­i­ties.

Drug lords re­cruit­ing squat­ters

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his of­fice on Tues­day, vice chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) Nas­sar Ho­sein said he has seen first­hand the in­flux of out­siders to cer­tain squat­ting ar­eas in Va­len­cia and San­gre Grande, but stressed that the im­pov­er­ished liv­ing con­di­tions of some squat­ters made them sus­cep­ti­ble to in­flu­ence from crime boss­es. “They might set up a ten-by-ten struc­ture on a piece of state land. A needy per­son would go in­to an area to squat. It is sad to say that these peo­ple, some of them are not work­ing and so on, they hus­tle to make ends meet. Some drug lords come in to re­cruit them and there they go. End of sto­ry. It is a fact that lots of peo­ple come from the out­side and in­to these squat­ting ar­eas from Va­len­cia to Matelot.”  

In Damarie Hill, “You don’t know who is who”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Robin­son Lane, Damarie Hill, where three peo­ple were shot re­cent­ly, and spoke with res­i­dents who were con­cerned about crim­i­nals mi­grat­ing to their neigh­bour­hood to com­mit crimes. “You don’t know who is who, wher­ev­er they come from, they could be run­ning from vi­o­lence or hid­ing for their life. When they come to an area here, they could be start­ing crim­i­nal thing.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, An­der­son Cruick­shank main­tained that while out­siders with crim­i­nal ten­den­cies were a con­cern, the ma­jor­i­ty of crimes were com­mit­ted by na­tive east­ern­ers. Point­ing at bul­let holes on a near­by wall from the lat­est shoot­ing in the area, Cruick­shank said it was un­like­ly that such at­tacks were com­mit­ted by peo­ple out­side their com­mu­ni­ty. “Re­al­ly and tru­ly, a stranger isn’t com­ing to a strange area to do some­thing like this.

Some­one from the com­mu­ni­ty has to go out there and bring the stranger in the area to know the area to do what they want to do.” He added that, like many oth­er ar­eas in T&T, young men un­able to find fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty of­ten turned to un­der­world fig­ures for sup­port, which con­tributed to the cy­cle of crime.

Squat­ting alone isn’t the prob­lem   

One Damarie Hill res­i­dent said cer­tain streets and al­leys in the neigh­bour­hood were con­sid­ered drug blocks. He said San­gre Grande was not spared the im­pact of the drug trade and turf wars over who con­trolled which ar­eas and who was al­lowed to sell drugs in which ar­eas. The man, who was among sev­er­al oth­er res­i­dents lim­ing at a neigh­bour­hood par­lour, said the lat­est bout of vi­o­lence re­newed fear among res­i­dents who took a chance to come out­side and so­cialise be­fore re­turn­ing home.

“When a man could come out here and sell drugs for him­self, it doesn’t have that any­more. Things grad­u­al­ly eased up over two years now we have come back out. But this shoot­ing have us scared again. We were com­ing back out think­ing it eased up, but we know the place gone through now.”

Figueira: Drug trade and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing are con­trib­u­tors  

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said while squat­ting may be re­spon­si­ble for part of the uptick in crime in east­ern com­mu­ni­ties, it was not the on­ly fac­tor to con­sid­er. Figuera said changes in crime trends in the East have been no­ticed since as ear­ly as 2017, not­ing that the drug trade and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing have al­so con­tributed to the re­gion’s crime prob­lems. He added that spillover of crime from ar­eas in the neigh­bour­ing North­ern Di­vi­sion (Ari­ma, Cu­mu­to, and Waller­field) and the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion (Arou­ca, Tu­na­puna, St Joseph) al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the re­gion’s crime chal­lenges.

“There have been oth­er de­vel­op­ments in the East­ern Di­vi­sion that have led to the crime chal­lenges, in­clud­ing the rise of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and the vi­o­lence em­a­nat­ing from the il­lic­it trades, so that is how the sit­u­a­tion is com­plex with the East­ern Di­vi­sion.”

Po­lice sources said Trinidad’s east coast has long been a point of en­try for co­caine ship­ments, with mul­ti­ple in­stances of the drugs wash­ing ashore on­to Ma­yaro beach­es over the years. In the most re­cent in­ci­dent last Au­gust, 36 pack­ets of co­caine were found on Isth­mus Road, Guayagua­yare, by of­fi­cials of a near­by BP com­pound.

Po­lice said the drugs were worth an es­ti­mat­ed $21,373 440.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the dis­cov­ery of the co­caine was linked to sev­er­al as­saults and at least one kid­nap­ping in Ma­yaro and San­gre Grande in late 2023.