Less than an hour af­ter they were robbed by two men who en­tered their maxi taxi, a dri­ver and pas­sen­ger en­coun­tered the same ban­dits and point­ed them out to po­lice as they en­tered an­oth­er minibus in Mon­day night.

Po­lice said the dri­ver and pas­sen­ger were trav­el­ling on the east­bound lane of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, around 10.15 pm when they picked up two men in San Juan.

One of the men pressed the bell to be let out of the maxi at the St Au­gus­tine tun­nel near the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

As they ex­it­ed the maxi, one of the men pulled out a gun and point­ed it at them and or­dered them to hand over their valu­ables.

The ban­dits stole two cell­phones, a pair of ear­rings and a quan­ti­ty of cash be­fore es­cap­ing.

The dri­ver went to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion to re­port the rob­bery, but were told by po­lice to make the re­port at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion in­stead.

While trav­el­ling to St Joseph, both men saw the same ban­dits get­ting in­to an­oth­er maxi and kept sight of them, while fol­low­ing the ve­hi­cle.

The vic­tims called the po­lice and told then what hap­pened.

St Joseph and Barataria po­lice in­ter­cept­ed the maxi con­tain­ing the ban­dits near Mt Lam­bert short­ly af­ter and ar­rest­ed both sus­pects.

Po­lice said they found a Smith and Wes­son pis­tol with 15 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and a quan­ti­ty of cash and jew­ellery on the men.

They were tak­en to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion pend­ing fur­ther in­quiries.

Sev­er­al so­cial me­dia users have raised con­cerns over the de­ci­sion of Tu­na­puna po­lice to di­rect the vic­tims to make their re­port at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion. —Shane Su­perville

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on Tues­day, a po­lice spokesper­son con­firmed that the pub­lic can re­port crime at any po­lice sta­tion, re­gard­less of whether or not the in­ci­dent took place in that par­tic­u­lar sta­tion dis­trict.

The spokesper­son stressed that the pub­lic should not be turned away.

“If that was done in this case then it will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion can be tak­en against the of­fi­cer or of­fi­cers.”

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice de­part­men­tal or­der 139 dat­ed Ju­ly 22, 2008, of­fi­cers are man­dat­ed to “Record, at least, the ar­rival of the per­son, take the per­son’s re­port and state­ment and en­sure the mat­ter is ad­dressed or for­ward­ed for at­ten­tion to the rel­e­vant sta­tion.”