Two weeks af­ter the head of the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit (AKU) urged the pub­lic to re­frain from shar­ing too much per­son­al in­for­ma­tion on­line, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers agreed that ex­tor­tion vic­tims were some­times re­spon­si­ble for lead­ing these per­pe­tra­tors right to their door via their so­cial me­dia posts. They re­vealed that some peo­ple were even be­ing ex­tort­ed by rel­a­tives.

Speak­ing dur­ing a stake­hold­er meet­ing host­ed by the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil on Wednes­day, the head of the An­ti Ex­tor­tion Unit (AEU), As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Richard Smith said peo­ple were in­ad­ver­tent­ly open­ing them­selves up to this type of crime.

Ad­dress­ing the crowd that turned up at the El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary School, Kara­math Street, El Do­ra­do, Smith ap­pealed to peo­ple to be mind­ful of what they post for the world to see.

Smith said it was dan­ger­ous to post “self­ies” with one’s chil­dren, fam­i­ly, ve­hi­cles, jew­ellery and even out lim­ing.

He said in cer­tain in­stances, some ex­tor­tion­ists were even re­lat­ed to their vic­tims; and knew their fi­nan­cial stand­ing and busi­ness deal­ings.

“The in­for­ma­tion is not go­ing to them by any rock­et sci­en­tist or any spe­cial for­mu­la. It is you sup­ply­ing that in­for­ma­tion. I can’t tell you not to ad­ver­tise. I can­not tell you not to put up your chil­dren’s pic­tures or your ve­hi­cle pic­ture, that is your achieve­ment.

He added, “It could be your own em­ploy­ee who know your busi­ness. It could be your own friend, too, who try­ing to ex­tort mon­ey from you be­cause he re­alise that you have and he will put sys­tems in place to get your mon­ey by any means pos­si­ble.

“We re­al­ly need to be care­ful of how we are shar­ing in­for­ma­tion, of how we are keep­ing our se­crets, of how we are keep­ing our doc­u­ments as it re­lates to our busi­ness.”

In­di­cat­ing this was a se­ri­ous prob­lem, Smith said the AEU was for­mal­ly es­tab­lished on Oc­to­ber 7, and of­fi­cers had hit the ground run­ning, record­ing new cas­es and delv­ing in­to old ones.

At the time of its for­ma­tion—the AEU had 25 re­ports on its desk. It is now in­ves­ti­gat­ing 41 cas­es for the year so far.

In 2023, in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, Smith said, one vic­tim re­ceived 133 ex­tor­tion de­mands.

Smith shared that the vic­tim had bor­rowed mon­ey from a cou­ple and that the in­ter­est had nev­er stopped.

He said, “The vic­tim paid 133 times un­til he couldn’t pay any more and he was de­plet­ed, so then he came to the po­lice and we dealt with them. They are cur­rent­ly be­fore the court.”

ACP, North­ern Di­vi­sion, Rishi Singh added his voice to those call­ing on the pub­lic to re­port any and all crimes to the po­lice.

He said the TTPS had to be mul­ti-di­men­sion­al in its ap­proach to solv­ing crime, and in do­ing so, pub­lic part­ner­ships were cru­cial as of­fi­cers de­pend on the pub­lic to re­port of­fences when they are com­mit­ted, and al­so pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to solve the crime.

Pres­i­dent of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil, Neil Boodoos­ingh praised the ef­forts of law en­force­ment in the Tu­na­puna Busi­ness Dis­trict as he claimed, “Busi­ness­es that had closed have now re­opened their doors and I am hap­py to say that busi­ness­es that were shot up, they are now back open and con­duct­ing their busi­ness.”