Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Three home in­va­sions with­in a mat­ter of hours on Wednes­day morn­ing have pushed the num­ber of such in­ci­dents re­port­ed this year to 210, as ban­dits tar­get­ed homes in Bar­rack­pore, To­ba­go and Diego Mar­tin, po­lice said.

In the first in­ci­dent, a 50-year-old Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cer was asleep at his Bar­rack­pore home around 1.10 am when he woke up to the sound of his dog bark­ing.

On check­ing, he saw a ban­dit wear­ing a ski mask stand­ing in his kitchen.

The of­fi­cer pulled out his li­censed Glock 19 pis­tol and fired four shots at the ban­dit, who es­caped by jump­ing out of a near­by win­dow and run­ning away.

Po­lice said the ban­dit tried to steal a quan­ti­ty of pow­er tools from a tool­shed at the side of the house, but was un­able to take them be­fore be­ing con­front­ed.

Hours lat­er, at around 4 am a 50-year-old busi­ness­man was beat­en and robbed at his Bagatelle No 1, Calder Hall, To­ba­go home.

Po­lice said the man was awak­ened by a blow to his head and no­ticed a man in a black hood­ie and mask stand­ing over him with a ri­fle.

Po­lice said the man and his son were robbed of two bags, one of which con­tained $3,400 in cash and US $14,000.

Short­ly af­ter, at around 5.15 am, a 26-year-old man was asleep at his Covi­gne Road, Diego Mar­tin home, when he heard some­one bang­ing on the front door and voic­es iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as po­lice of­fi­cers.

The men then stormed the house and or­dered him to lie on the floor as they kicked him in the head while de­mand­ing mon­ey.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the ban­dits wore masks and black tac­ti­cal cloth­ing, with at least one of the sus­pects al­so wear­ing a bul­let­proof vest bear­ing the mark­ings “Po­lice.”

The ban­dits stole $500 in cash, a gold chain worth $75,000 and a gold wrist­band worth $30,000 be­fore es­cap­ing.

These in­ci­dents fol­lowed a sim­i­lar clus­ter of home in­va­sions re­port­ed over the last week­end and in­to Mon­day morn­ing.

Ear­ly on Mon­day morn­ing, a Man­zanil­la fam­i­ly was at­tacked and robbed at their home; while hours ear­li­er on Sun­day, a con­trac­tor and rel­a­tive were robbed at their Ca­can­dee Road, Fe­lic­i­ty home by what po­lice de­scribed as “Span­ish-speak­ing men.”

On Sat­ur­day night, a 63-year-old man fled a ban­dit at his Re­alise Road, Lengua Vil­lage, Princes Town home.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one of­fi­cial from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit said that since the Home In­va­sion Act was pro­claimed in Jan­u­ary of this year, it was still a rel­a­tive­ly new form of leg­is­la­tion and could not be com­pared to pre­vi­ous in­ci­dents.

Be­fore the procla­ma­tion of the act, crimes now cat­e­gorised as home in­va­sions were legal­ly de­fined as bur­glar­ies, house­break­ings or lar­ce­ny dwelling house, de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances of the in­ci­dent, in­clud­ing the time and whether any­one was at home or as­sault­ed at the time of the thefts.

While re­spond­ing to oral ques­tions dur­ing a sit­ting of the Low­er House in May, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­port­ed that as of April 19 there were 69 re­ports of home in­va­sion.

At this time, he added that 25 peo­ple were charged with home in­va­sions.

Months lat­er in Ju­ly, Alexan­der told re­porters that he felt the Home In­va­sion leg­is­la­tion was work­ing, not­ing that the law em­pow­ered the pub­lic to de­fend them­selves, which he said would send a strong mes­sage to crim­i­nals.

TTPS: Stand Your Ground not a li­cense to kill

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, TTPS Me­dia Am­bas­sador ASP Owie Rus­sell stressed that while cit­i­zens had a right to de­fend them­selves from crim­i­nals, any re­sponse to an at­tack should be pro­por­tion­al to the threat they face.

He said while at­tacks from ban­dits can stir strong feel­ings, it was im­por­tant for the pub­lic to con­sid­er the le­gal reper­cus­sions they could face if they use ex­ces­sive force.

Rus­sell said that while he sym­pa­thised with peo­ple who were vic­tims of crime be­fore and un­der­stood that some peo­ple would be ea­ger to re­spond vi­o­lent­ly to crim­i­nals, they them­selves could face pros­e­cu­tion if they used ex­ces­sive force.

“You must be able to stand that scruti­ny when the (po­lice) in­ves­ti­ga­tion takes place.

“You are not man­dat­ed to re­treat... we want you to de­fend your­self, but we must be pro­por­tion­ate de­fence based on what you hon­est­ly be­lieve, so even if it goes be­fore a court, the Judge, the Mas­ter, the mag­is­trate can say, ‘Based on what is be­fore me I am sat­is­fied you act­ed pro­por­tion­al­ly.”

In terms of what would qual­i­fy as a pro­por­tion­ate re­sponse, Rus­sell said some­one tres­pass­ing on­to your prop­er­ty by it­self was not suf­fi­cient grounds to re­spond with dead­ly force.

“Some­one jump­ing in­to your yard does not give you the li­cense to kill that per­son. “

Dr Ram­per­sad: Home In­va­sion leg­is­la­tion must work with oth­er ini­tia­tives

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said while the con­tin­ued re­ports of home in­va­sions were “wor­ry­ing,” she still felt that the Home In­va­sion law was nec­es­sary as it should work in tan­dem with oth­er crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing the roll-out of po­lice posts and Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion.

“Un­der no cir­cum­stances will I say the leg­is­la­tion is a waste of time... I think it is a use­ful leg­is­la­tion but it must go hand-in-hand with the firearms pos­ses­sion so cit­i­zens can pro­tect them­selves, the Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion and I think al­so there are ad­di­tion­al mea­sures that need to be tak­en and I think the po­lice posts is a wel­come one, how­ev­er I think they need more po­lice posts.”

Dr Ram­per­sad al­so sug­gest­ed that once the posts were op­er­a­tional, there should be some means of di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the of­fi­cers as­signed to these units and the pub­lic.

She said Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion was a par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant fea­ture of crime-fight­ing as she felt sev­er­al crim­i­nals were mind­ful of the re­sponse times of po­lice to such emer­gen­cies.