DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Ter­ri­fied to op­er­ate his busi­ness af­ter be­ing threat­ened by an al­leged gang leader and afraid that he could be killed by Thurs­day for speak­ing out, a con­trac­tor is call­ing on par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to change leg­is­la­tion to make it eas­i­er for po­lice to ap­pre­hend sus­pects who de­mand mon­ey by men­ace.

“I might not live un­til Thurs­day, I tell peo­ple. They hear me jok­ing here, be­cause I hid­ing out **** right now. I say, I might die but if that is the sac­ri­fice and some good come out of it ... yes, I have had 42 years of this non­sense in dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios. I just got en­tire­ly fed up now,” the con­trac­tor told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The up­set con­trac­tor said the an­ti­quat­ed laws were work­ing in the crim­i­nals’ favour.

“If they get held then they pay a lit­tle bail and they back out next five min­utes. We need to up­date the laws and em­pow­er the po­lice to be able to work ef­fec­tive­ly.

“If that is the sac­ri­fice and some­thing good comes out of this ...” the con­trac­tor said in re­sponse to new threats against him for speak­ing out, as he re­mained un­apolo­getic about go­ing pub­lic with the ha­rass­ment.  

The con­trac­tor ini­tial­ly spoke ex­clu­sive­ly with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, when he pro­vid­ed video and au­dio record­ings in which the al­leged gang­ster in­sist­ed that he be paid $30,000 per month to pre­vent the busi­ness­man’s fam­i­ly and work site from be­ing at­tacked.  

How­ev­er, the vic­tim, who is se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing flee­ing the coun­try, said the shake­down was not lim­it­ed to big busi­ness­es or the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. He knows at least one small hard­ware own­er who suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate.  

“Some of the low­er-lev­el gang mem­bers are branch­ing off on their own and do­ing their own lit­tle things so no­body is im­mune. Is from top to bot­tom they’re deal­ing with,” Guardian Me­dia was told.

The con­trac­tor said the per­pe­tra­tors were em­bold­ened by a low de­tec­tion rate and the si­lence of oth­er vic­tims.  

“Once one per­son pays it’s like drugs, you hooked for life with these peo­ple be­cause they know you’re will­ing to pay, they’ll latch on­to you. By ex­ten­sion, if you pay and they get away they’ll go on­to some­one else be­cause they feel em­pow­ered,” the source said.

The con­trac­tor is call­ing on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to unite to stamp out this lev­el of in­tim­i­da­tion that has been neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing busi­ness, re­call­ing be­ing held at gun­point in Ari­ma decades ago.

“They al­ways want to see the boss,” the vic­tim said about that at­tack in the 80s.  

Fur­ther­more, the con­trac­tor crit­i­cised MPs and coun­cil­lors for in­sist­ing that they hire their work­force with­in their re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties.  

“They [gang­sters] be­come en­ti­tled. The thing is you can’t take the vast ma­jor­i­ty and they want you to put per­cent­ages to it. But based on the size of the project yuh get, there is on­ly so much car­ry­ing ca­pac­i­ty you have in terms of labour be­cause you will be­come in­ef­fi­cient.”  

Change leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble–crim­i­nol­o­gist

Last month, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal urged the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to take a de­ci­sive stance against ex­tor­tion. He high­light­ed the in­volve­ment of gang lead­ers and in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als who have been mak­ing death threats and ex­tort­ing “mil­lions” of dol­lars from busi­ness­es. He called for a re­view or po­ten­tial amend­ment of the Kid­nap­ping Act, which ad­dress­es the is­sue of “us­ing men­aces to steal”.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad echoed calls for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to change leg­is­la­tion to make it pos­si­ble to use cer­tain ev­i­dence against crim­i­nals who are charged with ex­tort­ing vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.  

“One of the things that they can do leg­isla­tive­ly if it isn’t a se­ri­ous of­fence is to make it much more se­ri­ous but then al­so al­ter the kinds of ev­i­dence that could be utilised in court to pros­e­cute peo­ple for try­ing to ex­tort peo­ple and for ac­tu­al­ly ex­tort­ing peo­ple,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Seep­er­sad, ex­tor­tion may be a re­sult of gangs ex­pand­ing their ter­ri­to­ries. He said en­tre­pre­neurs are at risk and urged them against sweep­ing threats un­der the car­pet.  

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the State make it eas­i­er for busi­ness own­ers to get li­cenced firearms or risk them mi­grat­ing be­cause of in­sta­bil­i­ty.