"The police face so much ugliness that they have become so disconnected and desensitized to people's pain and hurt when they treating a missing person so casually." Those were the feelings of Linda Lake who is frustrated with police because they have a laid-back attitude towards locating her father, Alban, who has been missing since August.
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian on Wednesday from her Sangre Grande, home Lake said "In terms of our policing, it's disconcerting to me how laid-back everybody was when we're telling the police this was out of character for our father and they ask , 'Are you sure he's not with a woman somewhere?
"I don't know if they had gotten so used to people disappearing that they've become apathetic to people's grief.
"A relative called the Valencia police to report that his stepson had moved people into my father's house and the investigating officer said he didn't understand why they were fighting for property that was not theirs, why they didn't get their own? The officer has since apologised for that callous remark."
Alban Lake, 58, a father of three, has been missing since August 23. He was last seen entering his 59 Quarry Road, Valencia, home via CCTV footage.
The only other person that lived on the premises with him was his stepson who allegedly had an ongoing property dispute with him.
Lake said her father's girlfriend tried to get in contact with him to no avail, but she received a text from his phone at 9:18 pm saying he could not speak and was leaving home to lime with someone.
She said, however, when they reviewed the video footage, her father never came out of the house around that time the text was sent.
Lake said the police checked where the text emanated from–Five Rivers, Arouca, but relatives were very suspicious as her father had no friends or family there and it did not fit the pattern of his phone use as he would usually call or WhatsApp instead of text.
She said her father held no bank account but had a unit trust account.
Lake said the most trying part for her was whether her father was roaming the streets, dead or if he was ever going to come back to his family.
She said she would like some form of closure for herself and her sisters, Crystal and Lisa, whether they find their father alive or to lay him to rest. Not knowing his fate made it harrowing.
Lake said when she passed some homeless people on the streets one day, her five-year-old son turned to her and said to stop the car because they had to check for his grandfather and that broke her.
She said her son was aware that part of the family was missing and it seemed that nobody could be bothered, he was just another statistic.
Lake said she gave the police specific times on the video footage to look for a person of interest and a black Navara pickup that was seen reversing onto her father's premises the night he went missing.
She said although generally her experience was less than satisfactory with the police, she would like to thank some of them who assisted the family such as Sgt Edwards and Sgt Lopez from the Valencia Police Station, and Sgt Richards from the Port-of-Spain Homicide Bureau.
�2Anyone with information on Alban Lake can contact the Valencia police station at 667?9030 and TTPS Anti-Kidnapping Squad at 623-6793.