Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Ef­forts to com­bat il­le­gal quar­ry­ing are be­ing hin­dered by cor­rupt State el­e­ments and those fear­ful of vi­o­lent in­tim­i­da­tion as crim­i­nal gangs have been prop­ping up the op­er­a­tions.

And even as ef­forts have been made by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to tack­le the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, there is an ur­gent ap­peal for se­ri­ous work to be done by oth­er State agen­cies col­lab­o­rat­ing with the po­lice to dis­man­tle this com­plex op­er­a­tion.

The head of the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force (MATF), ASP Leon Haynes, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, em­pha­sised the need for in­sti­tu­tions to ad­just and keep up with the ever-in­creas­ing re­source­ful­ness of crim­i­nals, who have evolved to take ad­van­tage of the in­ad­e­qua­cies of some agen­cies. 

ASP Haynes said this may re­quire em­pow­er­ing these agen­cies to take a more res­olute stance against il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

“I just think a lot of the agen­cies have not de­vel­oped to the times and have not un­der­stood how Trinidad has changed and changed to treat with the po­si­tion so­ci­ety has reached. The agen­cies are still at 15 or 20 years ago. Some of the agen­cies that were un­armed back in the day may have to be armed now with the changes in so­ci­ety.”

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that with these en­hanced ca­pac­i­ties, prop­er over­sight would be need­ed to en­sure that du­ties are hon­est­ly ful­filled.

Re­fer­ring to the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), which holds po­lice of­fi­cers ac­count­able, Haynes sug­gest­ed sim­i­lar mech­a­nisms for of­fi­cials in the Forestry Di­vi­sion or the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands.

Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel said that while the De­fence Force has as­sist­ed the po­lice and oth­er State agen­cies in deal­ing with these ac­tiv­i­ties, he ad­mit­ted that even with the De­fence Force’s sup­port, it is dif­fi­cult.

“You would ap­pre­ci­ate that oth­er en­ti­ties need to do some se­ri­ous work to un­der­stand who is the own­er of the quar­ry and the li­cence it has to get. It’s mul­ti­fac­eted in terms of what’s need­ed to ad­dress this ef­fec­tive­ly.”

Now fol­low­ing the mon­ey  

Since 2018, at least 19 peo­ple have been charged with of­fences re­lat­ed to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. How­ev­er, those charged are still be­fore the courts.

In the most re­cent in­ci­dent on May 2, eight men, in­clud­ing Aluko Ato Warn­er, the son of To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er, were ar­rest­ed at a pro­cess­ing plant in Agua San­ta, Waller­field, and lat­er charged. 

ASP Haynes said the peo­ple typ­i­cal­ly ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to quar­ry­ing were “low-lev­el” par­tic­i­pants, usu­al­ly ma­chine op­er­a­tors, while the mas­ter­minds have re­mained un­touched.

“Be­fore these op­er­a­tions, we used to just ar­rest the truck dri­ver and the ex­ca­va­tor dri­ver; that had no ef­fect. They were dis­pos­able. We locked them up, they plead guilty, and a new one comes to­mor­row.”

Po­lice are now em­ploy­ing a dif­fer­ent tac­tic, ASP Haynes said. “We are fol­low­ing the mon­ey to see where the mon­ey lands, and then, to­geth­er with oth­er agen­cies, we in­ves­ti­gate to treat with those peo­ple who are ben­e­fit­ing the great­est.”

ASP Haynes ex­pressed con­fi­dence that their new op­er­a­tional strat­e­gy could yield re­sults de­spite po­ten­tial chal­lenges, but ac­knowl­edged that it may take a longer time­line.

He said the MATF has con­duct­ed 97 pa­trols to in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints passed on to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) on il­le­gal quar­ries.

“We could jump from one re­port to the next or suc­cinct­ly treat each re­port to its con­clu­sion un­til we have a suc­cess­ful con­vic­tion. What we tend to do is fo­cus on re­ports in one area, dot our I’s, cross our T’s, put them to court like what we’re do­ing now, and move on to the next area.”

Sources said that in Agua San­ta alone, there has been a clus­ter of quar­ry­ing sites near the pro­cess­ing plant that was raid­ed.

Crim­i­nal gangs in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing pos­es a greater threat than just caus­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age and un­der­cut­ting le­git­i­mate op­er­a­tors. The il­le­gal op­er­a­tions are of­ten backed by crim­i­nal gangs. ASP Haynes said the ab­sence of prop­er reg­u­la­tions on State lands has turned quar­ry­ing in­to a lu­cra­tive crim­i­nal en­ter­prise, draw­ing the at­ten­tion of or­gan­ised crime groups.

“When peo­ple take State lands for quar­ry­ing or squat­ting, there’s no deed, so the on­ly way they can hold it against some­one else who takes it is to fight for it. You get the gang that pro­tects the en­ter­prise, and this is how it works, es­pe­cial­ly in the East.

“If you take a por­tion of State land and quar­ry it, you don’t own it; it’s open for any­one with a big­ger gun to take it from you.”

In an Au­gust 2023 me­dia re­lease, then-DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Curt Si­mon said tack­ling il­le­gal quar­ry­ing was key to curb­ing this coun­try’s mur­der rate.

One month lat­er, in Sep­tem­ber 2023, 49-year-old Andy Fran­cois, alias “Big Andy”, was gunned down on Va­len­cia Old Road. 

In­tel­li­gence sources said be­tween 2016 and 2019, a high-rank­ing mem­ber of a gang in east Trinidad was in­volved in the pro­tec­tion of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing sites in Ve­ga de Oropouche, San­gre Grande. The gangs as­sist in pro­vid­ing equip­ment as well as pro­tec­tion.

“All you have to do is pay your work­ers, the ex­ca­va­tor me­chan­ic, the cost of gas, the ex­ca­va­tor op­er­a­tor, and the rental,” sources re­vealed.

“A lot of the time, those ex­ca­va­tors make $1,000 per day, so you’re look­ing at an op­er­at­ing cost of about $10,000 per day.

“Each truck makes $3,000 per day by trans­port­ing grav­el, and they usu­al­ly op­er­ate five to ten trucks a day.”

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in March, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards raised con­cerns about the dan­ger of armed gangs in­volved in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

Richards, while pos­ing a ques­tion to Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel, re­ferred to warn­ings he had re­ceived from mem­bers of the Air Guard dur­ing flight train­ing over the North­ern Range.

“They (the Air Guard) took us on a flight over parts of the North­ern Range, and we want­ed to go clos­er, and we were told we couldn’t be­cause they (crim­i­nals) would shoot at the craft if we flew clos­er,” he added. 

Pub­lic of­fi­cials tempt­ed by ben­e­fits or in­tim­i­dat­ed by dan­ger

In Jan­u­ary 2023, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ker­win Fran­cis, who was then head­ing the North­ern Di­vi­sion, held a me­dia brief­ing where he re­port­ed that il­le­gal quar­ry­ing was chal­leng­ing to tack­le due to the in­volve­ment of var­i­ous pub­lic of­fice­hold­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to a source, while the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) sus­pect­ed the in­volve­ment of some po­lice of­fi­cers in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, it was chal­leng­ing to link them to the crime. 

This was be­cause bribes were of­ten ex­changed through a “cash-on­ly sys­tem”, with no hard-copy or dig­i­tal records be­ing kept. 

Waller­field is a part of the Ari­ma Po­lice Dis­trict in the North­ern Di­vi­sion. How­ev­er, of­fi­cers from the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, a neigh­bour­ing po­lice di­vi­sion on the east-west Cor­ri­dor, were in­volved in the raid at Agua San­ta.

Ac­cord­ing to a source, the re­sources of dif­fer­ent di­vi­sions are some­times pooled for spe­cial ex­er­cis­es to avoid tip­ping off the in­tend­ed tar­gets, who may have po­lice con­tacts in the dis­trict.

“I’m not say­ing that is the rea­son those of­fi­cers were brought in; we haven’t had any sus­pi­cions of North­ern Di­vi­sion be­ing com­plic­it in the act, but it al­so doesn’t hurt to have ex­ter­nal of­fi­cers come in just to be sure,” the source added.

In Jan­u­ary 2009, po­lice seized an ex­ca­va­tor at Block Three, Waller­field, for al­leged­ly be­ing used for il­le­gal quar­ry­ing work. How­ev­er, it was lat­er dis­cov­ered that the ex­ca­va­tor was miss­ing from the Cu­mu­to com­pound of the now-dis­band­ed Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT).

In­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the ve­hi­cle re­mained un­clear, as some re­ports from al­leged SAUTT sources at the time claimed that no ex­ca­va­tor was seized. 

In sit­u­a­tions where bribery fails, ASP Haynes said quar­ry op­er­a­tors and their agents re­sort to more ag­gres­sive tac­tics to pro­tect their in­ter­ests.

He said the vi­o­lence used by gangs to pro­tect quar­ries is known and feared even among some State agen­cies.

“The un­armed law en­force­ment or in­ves­tiga­tive agen­cies like the Forestry Di­vi­sion or State Lands and those things are very much fear­ful to even en­gage in any form of in­ves­ti­ga­tion, even sur­veil­lance or com­pli­ance pa­trols in some of these ar­eas known to be gang-re­lat­ed.

“We even had sit­u­a­tions when we were with the army, and when we tried to get oth­er agen­cies to go with us, they would tell us right away they’re not go­ing in that par­tic­u­lar area. There is a dis­tinct fear of these agents to op­er­ate oth­er than their man­date.

“They don’t even want to go with the po­lice.”

Agen­cies need to up their game

ASP Haynes sug­gest­ed that the agen­cies can still play a vi­tal role in com­bat­ing il­le­gal pri­vate land quar­ry­ing, even with­out in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port. He said the crim­i­nals of­ten cir­cum­vent the pa­per­work by ac­quir­ing ap­proval from the Town and Coun­try De­part­ment and a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA). He said with these two ap­provals, the op­er­a­tors have per­mis­sion to change the lay­out of the en­vi­ron­ment by re­mov­ing ma­te­ri­als, while ac­tu­al­ly quar­ry­ing the area.

“The so­lu­tion for these types of things is for Town and Coun­try to do their com­pli­ance when they grant ap­proval, the EMA to send out com­pli­ance to en­sure what­ev­er ap­proval is ac­tu­al­ly done, and the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion who has en­gi­neers is to en­sure that these aren’t il­le­gal de­vel­op­ment op­er­a­tions. That pri­vate land quar­ry­ing hap­pens when these agen­cies fail.”