Ke­jan Haynes

Crim­i­nals are com­ing to east Trinidad not just to hide, but to set­tle and set up new crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es.

That’s what act­ing com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob told the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. He’s al­so telling them not to al­low crime to fes­ter by en­gag­ing with the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Ja­cob met with the coun­cil as part of his tour of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. He last met with the Ari­ma Bor­ough Coun­cil a month ago. Ja­cob told them the East­ern Di­vi­sion used to com­pete with To­ba­go for the low­est num­ber of se­ri­ous crimes in the coun­try. The crimes were of­ten do­mes­tic dis­putes. But re­cent­ly there have been spikes in mur­ders with three record­ed in just one week in and around one street, Pic­ton Ex­ten­sion.

Ja­cob notes ten of the mur­der vic­tims in the East­ern Di­vi­sion were not from the area. Many of the mur­ders he says are tied to land grab­bing and il­le­gal squat­ting.

“Don’t en­cour­age these il­le­gal set­tle­ments!” He warned the San­gre Grande Coun­cil. “It hap­pened in Cara­po and it’s hap­pen­ing here. I warned the coun­cil­lors, yes you’re look­ing for sup­port and look­ing for votes but some­thing worse can come out of it.”

He said it’s hard for po­lice to pa­trol squat­ter set­tle­ments be­cause there are of­ten no paved roads or elec­tric­i­ty for lights. He al­so not­ed the crim­i­nal el­e­ments are em­ploy­ees of those who are do­ing il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. He said some are in­volved in drug blocks and some are even in­volved in transna­tion­al crime.

The Mul­ti-Agency Task Force set up by the TTPS has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mon­i­tor­ing il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and the un­law­ful de­vel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ties.

This unit works with the Land Set­tle­ment Agency and oth­er re­lat­ed agen­cies. Now there are calls for it to be ex­pand­ed from the ten of­fi­cers cur­rent­ly as­signed.

Chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Anil Juter­am told the com­mis­sion­er the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion of­ten re­ceives the blame for the in­crease of il­le­gal squat­ting and quar­ry­ing in their dis­trict. But he said much of the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty is be­ing done through orig­i­nal­ly le­git­i­mate means as some­one could re­ceive a con­tract to quar­ry five acres of land but once that land is ex­haust­ed they be­gin to en­croach on state land.

Juter­am added that un­planned de­vel­op­ments are a strain on the re­sources of the cor­po­ra­tion and safe­ty risk if they move in to de­stroy the il­le­gal struc­tures.

“How could we put our back­hoe with the lo­go of the San­gre Grande re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion in there?” he asked.

“We not putting our staff at risk. It’s time the Com­mis­sion of State Lands gets its own re­sources. We are not send­ing our em­ploy­ees to get mur­dered.”

For­mer chair­man Ter­ry Ron­don chimed in: “But dur­ing elec­tion time we are there with leaflets!”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the meet­ing Juter­am said he will be call­ing for a meet­ing with the agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, the com­mis­sion­er of state lands and the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice to ad­dress the is­sue of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing on state land. He called on the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young to look in­to who’s gain­ing con­tracts to quar­ry on agri­cul­tur­al land.

“This must be a sig­nal that we are send­ing to all oth­er cor­po­ra­tions and all oth­er agen­cies that no one is above the law,” he said.

Juter­am said oth­er agen­cies have tak­en a hands-off ap­proach and are plac­ing all the blame on the TTPS and the Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ja­cob told Juter­am and the coun­cil they should be will­ing to be in­ter­viewed by in­ves­ti­ga­tors. He said too of­ten peo­ple are will­ing to say things in the pub­lic do­main but when the po­lice come to in­ter­view them they say: “I say what I have say al­ready.”