Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

“What a des­per­ate­ly bad place we’re in in Trinidad and To­ba­go.” These were the words of the for­mer prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, Prof Clement K Sankat, who was robbed yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

Re­call­ing what hap­pened, Sankat said he went to the Tu­na­puna Mar­ket to get the bat­tery of his watch re­placed at one of the stalls. While wait­ing, a man wear­ing red con­struc­tion cloth­ing and a hel­met snatched his gold bracelet, which Sankat not­ed for its val­ue hav­ing been bought in Guyana many years ago. The man then ran away. 

In shock, Sankat asked for help from an­oth­er man, who was wear­ing green con­struc­tion cloth­ing. But un­be­knownst to Sankat, the man was an ac­com­plice in the crime.

Af­ter the rob­bery, Sankat fol­lowed the men un­til they dis­ap­peared along a side street on Tu­na­puna Road. Re­flect­ing on the course of ac­tion that he took, he re­alised it could have pos­si­bly cost him his life. 

“When I told this to my friends, they said, ‘Clem, you did some­thing very stu­pid to run be­hind them, be­cause they could’ve pulled a gun on you,’” Sankat said. 

He then made a re­port to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was “pleas­ant­ly sur­prised” by the lev­el of “cour­tesy” he was met with by po­lice of­fi­cers. Sankat was al­so tak­en in­to a room where he got a bird’s-eye view of the town of Tu­na­puna via their cam­eras.

The po­lice were able to iden­ti­fy the rob­bers via their cam­eras.

Sankat praised the Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce for join­ing with the po­lice in the fight against crime. 

“I was told that cam­era was put up by the Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce. My hat’s off for them! You’ve done great work, and it shows a lot of com­mu­ni­ty sup­port. Based up­on this ex­pe­ri­ence, it could al­so be a good ex­am­ple for all the cham­bers in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try; they should as­sist the po­lice with those cam­eras. Tech­nol­o­gy can help us de­ter and de­tect crime,” Sankat said. 

“I grieve for the fam­i­lies who would’ve lost loved ones. There was a time when the lead­er­ship of this coun­try was talk­ing about peo­ple get­ting killed and us­ing the words ‘col­lat­er­al dam­age”—com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able! Years ago, they were say­ing peo­ple who got shot, this was ‘col­lat­er­al dam­age,” but let me tell them this is not col­lat­er­al dam­age any­more. 

“Peo­ple are be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly killed and tar­get­ed in this coun­try. What is the lead­er­ship do­ing about it? They seem al­most un­car­ing,” Sankat said. 

Re­flect­ing on the in­ci­dent, Sankat is grate­ful to God that he was un­harmed.