Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

At least three times a night, busi­ness­man Den­nis Lall (not his re­al name) checks the CCTV cam­era app on his cell­phone.

The cam­eras, which are an­gled to record the en­trance to his gate and part of the street out­side his Tacarigua home, were in­tend­ed to put his mind at ease when he in­stalled them two years ago, but have on­ly added to his dai­ly para­noia.

Six months ago, Lall was ap­proached by two young men who made their de­mands for a month­ly fee of $5000.

While he had heard how ram­pant ex­tor­tion has be­come, he nev­er an­tic­i­pat­ed be­ing a vic­tim him­self.

“They said, ‘We know you mak­ing re­al mon­ey here and we sure you wouldn’t want any­thing hap­pen to you or your busi­ness, so it’s best you just pay we what we want. They said they want­ed $5000 a month and since then peo­ple just keep pass­ing and watch­ing my place. It’s wor­ry­ing,” Lall said.

The tense in­ter­ac­tion took a more un­set­tling turn when one of the ex­tor­tion­ists ac­cu­rate­ly quot­ed his bank ac­count bal­ance at the time. This, he said, was not on­ly a clear threat to his life but a vi­o­la­tion of his pri­va­cy.

“I im­me­di­ate­ly checked my bank ac­count just to con­firm and I re­al­ly had that amount in it at the time. I was shocked, be­cause who would have that in­for­ma­tion? I was sus­pect­ing it could have been one of my em­ploy­ees or some­thing be­hind this be­cause it was very ac­cu­rate,” he told Guardian Me­dia last week.

Lall has since re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the po­lice but that has done lit­tle to ease his anx­i­ety as he con­tin­ues to live in fear and be­lieves he sees strange ve­hi­cles near his busi­ness place, par­tic­u­lar­ly around clos­ing time.

As of No­vem­ber, there were 20 re­ports of ex­tor­tion un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the po­lice.

Small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es form the core of any com­mu­ni­ty with em­ploy­ment and valu­able ser­vices.

For busi­ness own­ers like Lall, the fear of be­ing a vic­tim is re­al. No one would speak to Guardian Me­dia on the record for fear of be­ing fur­ther tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

Lall said while the last six months of his life have been dif­fi­cult, he is cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that the sit­u­a­tion will im­prove. Rather than clos­ing his busi­ness for good, he is de­ter­mined that things will get bet­ter, even if the risks haven’t en­tire­ly gone away.

In an ear­li­er re­port, head of the po­lice An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Task Force ACP Richard Smith had said most of the ex­tor­tion cas­es in the North-Cen­tral and Cen­tral Di­vi­sions were be­lieved to be the work of a sin­gle gang.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Smith said while there was cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion to sug­gest the gang was re­spon­si­ble, it was not enough to se­cure ar­rests and charges to dis­rupt their net­work. He said such en­quiries de­mand­ed pa­tience and a co­he­sive strat­e­gy to achieve mean­ing­ful suc­cess and urged the pub­lic to be pa­tient.

Smith, who is al­so the ACP Ad­min­is­tra­tion, said ev­i­dence from the pub­lic would give the po­lice the up­per hand in the fight against ex­tor­tion.

“It’s not just a sim­ple in­ves­ti­ga­tion where you go ar­rest and charge peo­ple. We have in­for­ma­tion but we need ev­i­dence and in seek­ing ev­i­dence it will take some time, so while peo­ple will say, ‘Well the po­lice know about gangs and not do­ing any­thing,’ any gang in­ves­ti­ga­tion is a very com­pli­cat­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion and we need time. We can­not go to the DPP (Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions) with rub­bish, on­ly ev­i­dence.”

Be­tween last De­cem­ber and Oc­to­ber, there have been at least four in­stances where busi­ness peo­ple were kid­napped and a ran­som de­mand­ed for their safe re­lease.

Two of these kid­nap­pings took place in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and one oc­curred in the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, iden­ti­fied by Smith as ar­eas where the gang has con­duct­ed ex­tor­tions.

In­tel­li­gence sources sug­gest a con­nec­tion be­tween in­ci­dents of ex­tor­tion and an in­crease in kid­nap­pings, but Smith said there is no in­for­ma­tion to link the two crimes.

“We are work­ing close­ly with the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit, but we have not seen that con­nec­tion as yet. We need to do some more analy­sis as it re­lates to that and if dur­ing the course of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion we recog­nise the per­sons com­mit­ting these of­fences we can say for cer­tain that it is re­lat­ed,” he said.

Asked to com­ment on Lall’s case, Smith said while he was not aware of the de­tails of the mat­ter, he ad­vised busi­ness own­ers like Lall to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to keep their fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion se­cret.

While he was hes­i­tant to com­ment fur­ther with­out know­ing the full in­for­ma­tion, Smith said fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments should be stored care­ful­ly and de­posits made in se­cret.

“You can­not al­low your em­ploy­ees to know the date and time you’re go­ing to de­posit your mon­ey. Get these se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies to trans­port it, even if the mon­ey is stolen at least it’s in­sured,” he ad­vised.

He said peo­ple should be guard­ed in their so­cial me­dia posts as their ac­counts might be mon­i­tored by crim­i­nals who se­cret­ly gath­er in­for­ma­tion on hob­bies, lim­ing spots and even their phone num­bers, de­pend­ing on the na­ture of their busi­ness.

Smith not­ed while the Task Force is a rel­a­tive­ly new ad­di­tion to the TTPS as it was on­ly formed in Sep­tem­ber, of­fi­cers are work­ing on new and old cas­es alike, but he ad­mit­ted the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are not al­ways straight­for­ward.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira re­cent­ly said some busi­ness­es are in­volved in il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties which led to them be­ing tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals for ex­tor­tion.

Those claims have been dis­missed by sev­er­al per­sons, in­clud­ing for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and head of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Bal­dath Ma­haraj.

But ex­tor­tion doesn’t on­ly af­fect large busi­ness­es.

Head of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil and the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber Neil Boodoos­ingh said small “mom and pop” mer­chants can al­so be tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals. Re­fer­ring to re­cent in­stances where ven­dors at the Tu­na­puna mar­ket were threat­ened, Boodoos­ingh said any­one can be a po­ten­tial vic­tim.

“There were sit­u­a­tions with sim­ple mar­ket ven­dors, who might be grow­ing their own pro­duce dur­ing the week and com­ing to sell on a week­end or buy­ing whole­sale and sell­ing re­tail, these are sim­ple peo­ple and they are be­ing tar­get­ed for as lit­tle as $50 to $100 per day,” he said.

Boodoos­ingh said in­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TTPS and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has led to sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in the state of se­cu­ri­ty in and around Tu­na­puna, but the work was on­go­ing.

He stressed that the key to the suc­cess of any po­lice re­sponse is the abil­i­ty of the pub­lic to share in­for­ma­tion.