Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Re­spond­ing to re­ports that a man was beat­en and threat­ened with sodomy if he could not pay $20,000 in cash, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Tu­na­puna MP Roger Alexan­der said such at­tacks were un­ac­cept­able and warned that a firm, de­ci­sive re­sponse from law en­force­ment was nec­es­sary to main­tain or­der.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, a man who works at a Tu­na­puna bar was called in­to the stock­room by his boss ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

On en­ter­ing the stock room, the man re­port­ed that he was beat­en by two men who then doused him with sev­er­al chem­i­cals in­clud­ing bleach, paint thin­ner and dis­in­fec­tant.

He said he was pinned down as one of his at­tack­ers pressed a pow­er drill against his anus. He was then threat­ened with a tin of dis­in­fec­tant and a blow­torch as one of the men threat­ened to place an egg in his anus.

He was or­dered to pay the cash by Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

Speak­ing with re­porters at an East­er Bon­net com­pe­ti­tion at his con­stituen­cy of­fice on El Do­ra­do Road, Alexan­der warned crim­i­nals that any­one in­tent on men­ac­ing peo­ple would be dealt with.

“Once it reach­es law en­force­ment, they will treat with it and they will treat with it very harsh­ly.

“You might do your ex­tor­tion, but I will be hav­ing you for three to six months in a place that can be very un­com­fort­able if you want to be.”

Alexan­der al­so not­ed that he has had dis­cus­sions with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bring­ing in spe­cial­ists to as­sist the po­lice on how to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to such mat­ters.

He said this ini­tia­tive would in­volve as­sis­tance from lo­cal and for­eign ex­perts to strength­en the in­ves­tiga­tive skills of lo­cal law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, as he felt a more ag­gres­sive, thor­ough re­sponse was need­ed to tack­le crim­i­nal net­works.

“I’m not see­ing that fight or will­ing­ness to go to the ex­tra mile... it’s not hap­pen­ing.

“In or­der to get that con­fi­dence we need from the pub­lic, there must be suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tions. You need to have all the rel­e­vant ev­i­dence, not piece or half. You, as an in­ves­ti­ga­tor, should be able to un­earth every­thing.”

To this point, Alexan­der said there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty that re­tired po­lice of­fi­cers with years of ex­pe­ri­ence could be brought in to as­sist the TTPS in their work.