Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cers from the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (FIB) are work­ing to trace the ori­gin of a quan­ti­ty of cash that was found at a Val­sayn home some­time be­tween Fri­day and yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers from the DCP Op­er­a­tions’ Task Force, the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force and the po­lice Ca­nine Unit vis­it­ed sev­er­al homes in the neigh­bour­hood af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­tel­li­gence about sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

On en­ter­ing one home, of­fi­cers found TT 29,000 and US $2,500. A 39-year-old man was tak­en in for ques­tion­ing by po­lice and was re­port­ed­ly as­sist­ing of­fi­cers with the en­quiries.

The ex­er­cise was led by DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin, ACP Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion and Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Unit Richard Smith, ASP St Claire and Cpl Steven­son.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, DCP Ben­jamin said while the mat­ter was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed, the ex­er­cise was tes­ta­ment to the com­mit­ment of the po­lice in us­ing in­tel­li­gence to in­ter­rupt and dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works.

He ad­mit­ted vi­o­lent crimes like mur­ders, shoot­ings, wound­ings and as­saults were still a con­cern but said, “We con­tin­ue to seek to re­duce the crime sit­u­a­tion with in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions. We act­ed on this in­tel­li­gence and from the in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, mem­bers of the DCP op­er­a­tions task force went to a par­tic­u­lar home and while we went there with the in­ten­tion to look for dan­ger­ous drugs and oth­er things, we found a quan­ti­ty of cash, which is en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice. So, we will con­tin­ue to do what we have to do to re­duce crime and en­sure per­pe­tra­tors are brought be­fore a court of law.”

Ben­jamin main­tained that the dis­cov­ery of large sums of mon­ey could quell large-scale or­gan­ised crime ac­tiv­i­ties, as the cash was of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works.

“The TTPS has of­fi­cers trained in these ar­eas and we are fo­cus­ing in these ar­eas to deal with any cat­e­go­ry of fraud, where we see abuse, tax in­va­sions or bribery... any sort of im­pro­pri­ety, we will deal with it hands-on. We are seek­ing to bring those peo­ple to jus­tice and in do­ing so, will pre­serve a lev­el of the pub­lic’s trust as they see us go­ing against these el­e­ments.

“What we recog­nise is that peo­ple in­volved in these things are linked to ter­ror­ist groups, drug traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er or­gan­ised crimes, so we, the po­lice, won’t stop, we will con­tin­ue to re­al­ly put our hands on these is­sues so we can re­al­ly bring crime down and con­tin­ue to lead in terms of be­ing one of the Caribbean’s lead­ers in re­duc­ing crime.”

Mean­while, speak­ing with re­porters at a health fair at his con­stituen­cy of­fice in Tu­na­puna yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der praised the po­lice for their work in find­ing the cash, not­ing that the po­lice had the full sup­port of his min­istry and Gov­ern­ment in their con­tin­ued crime-fight­ing ef­forts.

But Alexan­der al­so im­plored the pub­lic to do their part by shar­ing in­for­ma­tion with au­thor­i­ties to find and ar­rest crim­i­nals.

“I want to give the pub­lic the as­sur­ance that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has our to­tal sup­port. It al­so plays a role for the pub­lic for them to say some­thing if they see some­thing. Now more than ever, the time has come where if you see or know some­thing and you don’t speak about it, it con­tin­ues. Let’s put an end to it,” he said.

Sec­tion 39 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act states that a mag­is­trate’s court may or­der the for­fei­ture of any cash on an ap­pli­ca­tion made, if that cash di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly rep­re­sents “any per­son’s pro­ceeds of the com­mis­sion of a spec­i­fied of­fence or is in­tend­ed by any per­son for use in the com­mis­sion of a spec­i­fied of­fence.”