Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

South­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Richard Smith has vowed that of­fi­cers will catch the car thieves whose chop shop they un­cov­ered in a forest­ed area in New Grant, Princes Town, on Wednes­day.

“They know that we know who they are, and we are com­ing for them,” Smith told re­porters at the site where of­fi­cers re­cov­ered hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars’ worth of car parts and the frames of eight ve­hi­cles.

The lo­ca­tion was dis­cov­ered about a quar­ter mile off North Trace af­ter the po­lice re­ceived a tip-off from a mem­ber of the pub­lic.

The of­fi­cers re­turned to the lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day to re­move the rest of the parts to the St Madeleine Po­lice Sta­tion, where they will be sort­ed and quan­ti­fied with the as­sis­tance of their foren­sic team and the Port-of-Spain Stolen Ve­hi­cle Unit.

Not­ing that this was part of an over­all op­er­a­tion over the last few weeks, Smith said due to the up­surge in ve­hi­cle thefts, they had been hav­ing sev­er­al meet­ings with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and TTPS ex­ec­u­tive to come up with strate­gies to crack down on these crimes.

“In the past few weeks, we have raid­ed garages in the South­ern Po­lice Di­vi­sion. Six per­sons ar­rest­ed thus far in con­nec­tion with the ve­hi­cles that we have found. With yes­ter­day’s count and to­day, we have re­cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 ve­hi­cles of dif­fer­ent types.”

He said the stolen ve­hi­cles in­clud­ed Ti­idas, Aquas, Hon­da City, Field­er Wag­ons and H100 pick­ups.

Not­ing that they found an as­sort­ment of parts from doors, bat­ter­ies and en­gines at the chop shop, he said the eight ve­hi­cle frames were sliced in halves. Smith said they al­so found plas­tic used to wrap the parts.

“Ap­par­ent­ly, they have or­ders, so we found some head­lights wrapped in them. We found some seats, so parts they want­ed to pro­tect they wrapped,” he ex­plained.

Smith be­lieves the crim­i­nals had been us­ing that lo­ca­tion for about three months.

“What is so amaz­ing is that com­ing in­to this dirt road, there are hous­es around here. I am sure peo­ple would have been see­ing ve­hi­cles tra­vers­ing in and out of this place. We have so many emer­gency and hot­line num­bers that peo­ple can call anony­mous­ly to give tips.”

He urged mem­bers of the pub­lic and busi­ness­es not to buy il­le­gal parts.

“I say to these buy­ers, have a heart please. Look at what is hap­pen­ing to hard earned mon­ey. You are en­cour­ag­ing this trade. Lar­ce­ny mo­tor ve­hi­cle is a se­ri­ous crime. (It’s) on­ly when some­thing hap­pens to their rel­a­tive or some­one who they know ve­hi­cle then they re­alise.” Smith said they have re­ceived fur­ther in­for­ma­tion and in­tend to go af­ter oth­er chop shops.

“We are com­mit­ted to break­ing this ring of lar­ce­ny mo­tor ve­hi­cle. We are try­ing all strate­gies and do­ing every­thing we know to get suc­cess. All di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders are al­so com­mit­ted to pro­ceed­ing along the same way.”

While urg­ing peo­ple to in­stall se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems in their ve­hi­cles, he said, “To those bent on this type of crime, please stop. We are com­ing af­ter you.”

He said some ve­hi­cles and parts re­cov­ered over the last few weeks are at the Princes Town and San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tions.

Sgt Bar­ry Bac­chus and PC Vaughn Babb were among the of­fi­cers at the lo­ca­tion in New Grant.