An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

Even as the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus con­tin­ues to op­er­ate un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE), it has not pre­vent­ed a se­nior law en­force­ment of­fi­cial from be­com­ing a vic­tim of crime him­self.

This, as the prop­er­ty of the Chief of De­fence Staff, Don Po­lo, was bro­ken in­to last Fri­day.

Po­lice re­ports in­di­cate Po­lo re­turned to his St Clair home around 8.30 pm and re­tired to bed. Around 9. 30 am the fol­low­ing day, Po­lo was alert­ed that the tail gate of his wife’s Vol­vo car was open.

Up­on check­ing, he dis­cov­ered a cup­board in the bar area bro­ken in­to and sev­er­al bot­tles of wine miss­ing.

A Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tor (CSI) re­trieved fin­ger print im­pres­sions and the area was can­vassed for cam­era footage from CCTV sys­tems on the homes of near­by res­i­dents.

Act­ing In­sp Jairam vis­it­ed the scene and act­ing Sgt Charles is con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.

Com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial de­scribed it as “un­for­tu­nate.” He said while it was ev­i­dent that “crim­i­nals had no re­spect for any­one,” it was al­so the sus­pect did not know the prop­er­ty was Po­lo’s and seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­mit a rob­bery.

Ef­forts to get com­ments from Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day proved fu­tile.

While a re­quest for in­for­ma­tion was sent to the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment yes­ter­day, no re­sponse was forth­com­ing up to last evening.