Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of east Port-of-Spain say a trou­bling trend of po­lice of­fi­cers al­leged­ly drop­ping de­tainees in “hos­tile” neigh­bour­hoods is putting lives at risk, and are call­ing on the lead­er­ship of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to take ac­tion against those in­volved.

The con­cerns were raised dur­ing a Po­lice Town Hall meet­ing at the St Joseph Road Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Wednes­day evening.

One res­i­dent, sol­dier Ja­son Ce­de­no, re­count­ed that his cousin was re­cent­ly de­tained by po­lice dur­ing en­quiries in­to a shoot­ing in the area. Al­though his cousin was re­leased with­out charge, Ce­de­no said of­fi­cers—us­ing un­marked ve­hi­cles—dropped him off in Bel­mont in­stead of re­turn­ing him to his John John com­mu­ni­ty.

He warned that such a prac­tice could have dead­ly con­se­quences in ar­eas di­vid­ed by gang turf.

Sev­er­al res­i­dents sup­port­ed Ce­de­no’s claim, say­ing they too had heard of sim­i­lar in­ci­dents.

“They ac­cus­tom do­ing that all the time,” one woman said from the au­di­ence.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, An­tho­ny Wick­ham, said he had al­so heard re­ports of po­lice de­lib­er­ate­ly drop­ping peo­ple in­to ri­val neigh­bour­hoods, plac­ing them at risk of gang re­tal­i­a­tion.

“If you take up a young man from one area and drop him off in an­oth­er area that you know is at war with his, there’s on­ly one thing you can ex­pect to hap­pen to him there,” he said.

Act­ing ASP Ash­ley Mon­groo of the Port-of-Spain CID apol­o­gised to Ce­de­no for the in­ci­dent and stressed that such be­hav­iour should not be tol­er­at­ed.

“Our core re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all peo­ple,” Mon­groo said. “It is un­for­tu­nate what hap­pened to Mr Ce­de­no’s cousin, and I want to apol­o­gise. It ought not to have hap­pened like that. The po­lice should not be plac­ing any­one in dan­ger.”

Mon­groo urged res­i­dents who were un­easy about shar­ing con­cerns pub­licly to vis­it him pri­vate­ly at his of­fice.

In­sp Joel Brath­waite of the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion en­cour­aged res­i­dents to work along­side the po­lice to strength­en com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el crime-fight­ing ef­forts. He not­ed that while en­forc­ing the law is a po­lice re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, ef­fec­tive “polic­ing” re­quires part­ner­ship with the com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, res­i­dent Ros­ton Thomp­son said the fear of be­ing killed for speak­ing to po­lice was too great, and he was un­will­ing to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion.

In re­sponse, Supt Edgar Baird ac­knowl­edged the dan­ger.

“I’ve been in the ser­vice for 36 years, and if you come and give me in­for­ma­tion and for some slight rea­son I feel some­body else might know, it’s best that the gun stay right there and you stay alive. That’s how I think,” Baird said.