Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Curt Si­mon is call­ing on cit­i­zens to be mea­sured in their re­spons­es to crim­i­nals, par­tic­u­lar­ly those cit­i­zens who are firearm users li­cence (FUL) hold­ers.

Si­mon said the force used by cit­i­zens to de­fend them­selves must be on par with the at­tack against them. He al­so con­demned vig­i­lante jus­tice.

“We al­ways ap­ply cau­tion in the mag­ni­tude in re­ac­tion. I draw the ex­am­ple of if some­one spits on you; you don’t pick up your gun and shoot them,” Si­mon said in an in­ter­view on I95FM yes­ter­day.

He added, “I send out a warn­ing to the pub­lic, you need to be aware of the threat that ex­ists be­fore you. You need to be aware of your re­spons­es. You have to be able in that split sec­ond to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the lev­el of the threat and your re­sponse.”

Si­mon said the re­sponse should not be greater than the threat it­self and that the threat must al­so not be per­ceived but re­al.

Si­mon’s com­ments came days af­ter a video on so­cial me­dia showed res­i­dents of Soledad Road North, Clax­ton Bay, beat­ing a man they claimed broke in­to a house in the area. The man was tied to a fence, beat­en with a belt and kicked in the face. He was then hand­ed over to the po­lice.

Mean­while, St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­ja Ameen made an­oth­er call to the Gov­ern­ment and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to in­crease a law en­force­ment pres­ence in her con­stituen­cy fol­low­ing an­oth­er mur­der over the week­end and oth­er in­ci­dents pre­vi­ous­ly.

Ameen is­sued a state­ment ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for a meet­ing to dis­cuss strate­gies and plans to pro­tect the res­i­dents of her con­stituen­cy. She said the res­i­dents of her con­stituen­cy were fed-up with crim­i­nals and were forced to stand their ground.

Her re­lease was prompt­ed by the shoot­ing death of a ban­dit by a 63-year-old man af­ter the de­ceased and oth­ers broke in­to his Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine home.

The ban­dit was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Kevon Ed­wards from Sec­ond Cale­do­nia in Mor­vant.

On Sat­ur­day, PH dri­ver Rawle Williams was al­so stabbed to death dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with three men in Curepe.

In her me­dia re­lease, Ameen al­so chas­tised the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to pro­tect cit­i­zens, as she re­called the mur­der and rob­bery of Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer Charles Kublals­ingh near his Curepe home.

Ameen, who at­tend­ed Kubal­als­ingh’s fu­ner­al, said the mur­der could have been pre­vent­ed, along with many oth­ers, if the Gov­ern­ment and Hare­wood-Christo­pher had re­spond­ed to her nu­mer­ous ap­peals for col­lab­o­ra­tion on deal­ing with es­ca­lat­ing crime in and around the St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy.

Ameen wrote to Hare­wood-Christo­pher in June re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter fur­ther and ex­plore po­ten­tial strate­gies to ad­dress the surge in crime.

“A mat­ter on the ad­journ­ment was al­so raised in May 2023 in the Par­lia­ment by the St Au­gus­tine MP on the es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion which was al­so ig­nored by the Gov­ern­ment. The MP is once again ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for a meet­ing to dis­cuss strate­gies and plans to pro­tect the res­i­dents of St Au­gus­tine.”