KI­TO JOHN­SON

One Feb­ru­ary evening in 1987, a young po­lice of­fi­cer at­tached to the Nar­cotics Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice went on a rou­tine "buy and bust" drugs op­er­a­tion with some of his col­leagues. He would nev­er re­turn. Po­lice Con­sta­ble Phillip Sal­vary's dis­ap­pear­ance made him the first high-pro­file ca­su­al­ty in a tox­ic mix of drugs, guns and high-lev­el cor­rup­tion, that would span two-and-a-half decades and claim thou­sands more lives.

The se­clud­ed La Tin­ta Bay on the tiny is­land of Cha­cachacare, was where it all be­gan. Ex­act­ly what hap­pened off the Ch­aguara­mas coast all those years ago, re­mains shroud­ed in mys­tery to this very day. But, sup­pos­ed­ly act­ing on a tip off from an in­for­mant that two Venezue­lan na­tion­als were in­tend­ing to of­fload a quan­ti­ty of co­caine at La Tin­ta, Sal­vary's team de­cid­ed to set up a sting op­er­a­tion pos­ing as un­der­cov­er buy­ers.

What Sal­vary and his posse did not know, was that an­oth­er group of un­der­cov­er po­lice of­fi­cers would be ly­ing in wait at that very same lo­ca­tion. Sal­vary's par­ty ar­rived on the is­land and met up with the two Venezue­lans-lat­er iden­ti­fied as Hen­ry Ramos and Luis Brit­to.

How­ev­er, be­fore the "deal" could be con­clud­ed be­tween them, the sec­ond group of of­fi­cers emerged from their hid­ing places and be­gan to phys­i­cal­ly as­sault Sal­vary's team and the two for­eign na­tion­als. It was on­ly when the fra­cas was over, and they had re­ceived some hefty blows, were Sal­vary and his col­leagues able to show that they were in fact bonafide po­lice of­fi­cers. Ramos and Brit­to were sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed, blind­fold­ed, and tak­en in­to cus­tody. Things would take an even stranger turn for the worse still, on the re­turn jour­ney back to Ch­aguara­mas.

The boat car­ry­ing Sal­vary and some of the oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers, as well as the six and a half ki­los of co­caine, sprung a leak and cap­sized in­to the Gulf of Paria. Sal­vary-who by all ac­counts was a very strong swim­mer, and co­caine val­ued at over $4 mil­lion dol­lars-were both lost at sea. De­spite ex­ten­sive search­es, PC Phillip Sal­vary's body was nev­er found, and he was even­tu­al­ly classed as "miss­ing-pre­sumed dead." None of the co­caine was ever re­cov­ered ei­ther. At the tri­al of the two Venezue­lans, Jus­tice Lennox Deyals­ingh would con­fess to hav­ing an "un­easy feel­ing" about the case.

He found it puz­zling that the Venezue­lan's boat-a ves­sel that had hith­er­to been sea-wor­thy enough to take them from the South Amer­i­can main­land to Cha­cachacare, and the same one that they would have used to get back-would sud­den­ly start tak­ing on wa­ter dur­ing the short trip to Ch­aguara­mas. Sev­er­al oth­er in­con­sis­ten­cies were flagged up in the pros­e­cu­tion's ev­i­dence. This in­clud­ed the ab­sence from court of the boat cap­tain who had al­leged­ly pi­lot­ed the first set of of­fi­cers across to Cha­cachacare-a man like­ly to have been a key in­de­pen­dent wit­ness had the pros­e­cu­tion both­ered to pro­duce him. It was al­so nev­er ad­e­quate­ly ex­plained how the two po­lice teams came to be chas­ing the same lead at the same time.

The case against Ramos and Brit­to col­lapsed, and they walked free from court. Dau­rius Figueira, lec­tur­er in Gov­ern­ment and Crim­i­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and au­thor of sev­er­al books, in­clud­ing "Co­caine and Hero­in Traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean: The case of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica and Guyana," reck­oned that the "rel­a­tive­ly small quan­ti­ty of co­caine in­volved in the La Tin­ta af­fair" meant that Ramos and Brit­to were prob­a­bly free­lancers, and not di­rect­ly linked to the Medellin car­tel, who were the dom­i­nant traf­fick­ers of Colom­bian co­caine through the Caribbean at the time. "If this was a Medellin car­tel ship­ment, it would have been much big­ger, and the re­ac­tion to its loss much more vi­o­lent." From the mid­dle of the 1990s on­wards, we would be­gin to see a shift in the way the Medellin car­tel op­er­at­ed, which dra­mat­i­cal­ly upped the ante for those en­gaged in the il­le­gal trade here in this coun­try.

The Scott Drug Re­port

The re­lease of a con­tro­ver­sial re­port in the weeks be­fore those mys­te­ri­ous events at La Tin­ta, which high­light­ed strong links be­tween se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers and those in the crim­i­nal un­der­world, led many peo­ple to be­lieve that there was more to PC Phillip Sal­vary's dis­ap­pear­ance than met the eye. In April 1984, re­tired Jus­tice Garvin Scott was asked by Prime Min­is­ter George Cham­bers to set up a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry to look in­to an em­bry­on­ic drugs and arms phe­nom­e­non that was be­gin­ning to cause con­cern. Scott and his team would trav­el the length and breadth of the coun­try; meet­ing with wit­ness­es in se­cret, and tak­ing reams of writ­ten state­ments.

The Scott Drug Com­mis­sion would un­cov­er a lev­el of cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion that was ram­pant and en­trenched across the po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty hi­er­ar­chies. So damn­ing were its find­ings, that Cham­bers de­cid­ed to sup­press them when the re­port was pre­sent­ed to him in 1986. Whilst this con­sti­tut­ed a fail­ure of lead­er­ship of the most shock­ing pro­por­tions, Cham­bers' ac­tions would nev­er­the­less her­ald a pat­tern of politi­cians con­tin­u­al­ly bury­ing their heads in the sand, rather than se­ri­ous­ly tack­ling the in­ter-re­lat­ed prob­lems of drug-traf­fick­ing, po­lit­i­cal bribery and cor­rup­tion in this coun­try. In this re­gard, pre­cious lit­tle has changed over the last 25 years.

The Com­mis­sion was par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, and found that po­lice of­fi­cers were com­plic­it in op­er­at­ing pro­tec­tion rack­ets for the larg­er deal­ers, while there was clear "ev­i­dence of en­gage­ment by po­lice­men in oth­er crim­i­nal acts, in­clud­ing smug­gling, coun­ter­feit­ing and prob­a­bly mur­der." Ac­cord­ing to Scott's team, the cor­rup­tion that ex­ist­ed with­in the ranks of the TTPS lead all the way back to one man-the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Ran­dolph Bur­roughs. Bur­roughs was iden­ti­fied as be­ing "linked in­ti­mate­ly with Naim Naya Ali, Dole Chadee, Ram­mer, and Rudolph Mills; all of whom are stat­ed to be very ex­ten­sive­ly in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing." Fur­ther­more, the elite Fly­ing Squad was said to be staffed by a cadre of se­nior of­fi­cers who were a vir­tu­al law un­to them­selves.

The Scott Com­mis­sion al­so iden­ti­fied a star­tling link be­tween drug traf­fick­ing, and an in­crease in il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion flood­ing in­to the coun­try. The Com­mis­sion ex­plained how South Amer­i­can drug car­tels had been ship­ping over large num­bers of so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapons to lo­cal crime gangs, which would then be dis­trib­uted amongst those re­spon­si­ble for the pro­tec­tion of the con­tra­band while it was on these shores. The re­port high­light­ed an in­stance where a Colom­bian car­tel al­leged­ly sent over "five M-16 as­sault ri­fles, four shot­guns, two oth­er ri­fles, a bazooka, and a .357 si­lenced Mag­num" in one con­sign­ment alone. What Scott didn't state, though, was that while most of the drugs were sub­se­quent­ly shipped out to des­ti­na­tions in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, the guns that came in­to the coun­try re­mained right here.

Shoot­ing the Mes­sen­ger

It was on­ly with the elec­tion of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion in 1986, that men­tion of the Scott Drug Re­port and its con­tents would start to seep in­to the pub­lic do­main. Fifty-three po­lice of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, would be im­pli­cat­ed in Scott's re­port and sus­pend­ed from du­ty. In ad­di­tion to the po­lice, Scott al­so fin­gered cus­toms and ex­cise em­ploy­ees, lo­cal busi­ness­men and women, mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry, and even gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, as be­ing in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked with the drug trade. Al­though some of the more ne­far­i­ous names in the re­port have since met their ul­ti­mate demise-Nankissoon 'Dole Chadee' Boodram, Naim Naya, Dr Rat, and Ted­dy 'Mice' Khan among them-many oth­ers are still alive to­day.

Garvin Scott soon found him­self in the fir­ing line of promi­nent fig­ures who had a great deal to lose. For them, at­tack­ing Scott's cred­i­bil­i­ty be­came the best form of de­fence. Many of the peo­ple in­ter­viewed by Scott's en­quiry team were in­deed shad­owy un­der­world fig­ures, and so it was said that these crim­i­nal char­ac­ters must have had ax­es aplen­ty to grind against the po­lice and oth­er es­tab­lish­ment fig­ures. The ev­i­dence gath­ered by the Com­mis­sion was crit­i­cised in many quar­ters as be­ing bi­ased, un­trust­wor­thy, and not able to with­stand se­ri­ous scruti­ny. Many of those named with­in it lament­ed at how they were nev­er giv­en the chance to clear their names. The new gov­ern­ment found it­self in a quandary. So, when Bur­roughs served up his own head on a plat­ter by ten­der­ing his res­ig­na­tion a few days af­ter the re­port's pub­li­ca­tion, they had got­ten their sac­ri­fi­cial lamb.

The au­thor­i­ties would look no fur­ther in­to Scott's wider ac­cu­sa­tions of crim­i­nal­i­ty and col­lu­sion, and con­signed his re­port to the an­nals of his­to­ry. Mere­ly five years would pass, though, be­fore the spec­tre of a "drug car­tel op­er­at­ing in the po­lice ser­vice" would again be raised by then As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Rod­well Mur­ray. This time, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning would send for the ex­per­tise of Eng­land's largest po­lice force, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice. But, not even Scot­land Yard's finest could over­come the great blue wall of si­lence and re­sent­ment that they en­coun­tered on their ar­rival. The British con­clud­ed that al­though they could not con­firm the ex­is­tence of any drug car­tel op­er­at­ing with­in the po­lice ser­vice, they nev­er­the­less found ev­i­dence of "a hard core of cor­rupt of­fi­cers who would do any­thing to get mon­ey, and one method is to pro­vide pro­tec­tion for those en­gaged in the drug trade."

The ro­man­ti­cists among us have long since claimed that Ran­dolph Bur­roughs died of a bro­ken heart due to the "un­grate­ful treat­ment of a coun­try that he had risked his life for." Viewed through this up­side-down and back-to-front prism, Bur­roughs is fond­ly re­mem­bered as a na­tion­al ac­tion hero who sin­gle-hand­ed­ly took on the forces of evil and de­struc­tion that were plagu­ing our so­ci­ety. No such sen­ti­ment is ever ex­pressed for the late jus­tice Garvin Scott, though; a man of whol­ly im­pec­ca­ble char­ac­ter who dared to say that it wasn't so.