Two sol­diers have been pe­nalised by the De­fence Force for us­ing ex­ces­sive force against peo­ple dur­ing the state of emer­gency while six oth­er com­plaints are un­der probe. The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day by civ­il mil­i­tary af­fairs of­fi­cer of the T&T De­fence Force, Cap­tain Al Alexan­der, dur­ing yes­ter­day's dai­ly po­lice news con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain. Alexan­der said the De­fence Force re­ceived nine com­plaints from mem­bers of the pub­lic, rel­a­tive to the con­duct of sol­diers. He said: "All nine mat­ters were in­ves­ti­gat­ed and three were com­plet­ed. Six are on­go­ing and two of the sol­diers were pe­nalised for their ac­tions."

He said pa­trols were made dai­ly in San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma, Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas, Fyz­abad, Co­coyea and Oropouche. Alexan­der said an ex­er­cise on Thurs­day led to the seizure of mar­i­jua­na, val­ued at $100,000, sev­en rounds of 5.5 am­mu­ni­tion and one pair of cam­ou­flage pants. One per­son was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the seizure at Eighth Av­enue, Barataria. Alexan­der said the of­fi­cers were fo­cus­ing on "hot spots". He added: "Each pa­trol has six to eight peo­ple and it is im­pos­si­ble to pa­trol every street.

"Where there is a high in­ci­dence of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, we do de­pend on the pub­lic to be our eyes and ears. It is a crit­i­cal fac­tor." Re­fer­ring to the in­ci­dent where a moth­er and daugh­ter were robbed and raped in Long­denville, he said: "Nor­mal­ly there are pa­trols in these ar­eas and we didn't pick up that." Alexan­der de­scribed the crime as "hideous" but con­grat­u­lat­ed law­men on the cap­ture of two sus­pects hours lat­er.