ACP Smith: Community partnerships key to tackling home invasions

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is strength­en­ing its re­sponse to home in­va­sions by work­ing more close­ly with com­mu­ni­ties and di­vi­sion­al po­lice units to en­sure a rapid ex­change of in­for­ma­tion dur­ing emer­gen­cies, ac­cord­ing to head of the Home In­va­sion Team (HIT) ACP Richard Smith.

His com­ments came af­ter of­fi­cers of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion were praised for their swift re­sponse to a brazen day­light home in­va­sion in Curepe on Mon­day, which end­ed with one sus­pect be­ing ar­rest­ed and an­oth­er fa­tal­ly shot dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the po­lice could not re­al­is­ti­cal­ly re­spond to every re­port of a home in­va­sion, Smith said col­lab­o­ra­tion with res­i­dents re­mained one of the unit’s most ef­fec­tive crime-fight­ing tools. He said build­ing trust with vic­tims had al­ready helped in­ves­ti­ga­tors dis­man­tle crim­i­nal groups, in­clud­ing the “Tall Boots Crew,” which was linked to a se­ries of home in­va­sions across Cen­tral Trinidad ear­li­er this year.

“We have been cre­at­ing a lot of bonds ... the fact is we are work­ing out there, the Home In­va­sion Law is ad­e­quate, the penal­ties are ad­e­quate and we want to go all the way to put these per­pe­tra­tors where they be­long which is be­hind bars.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Les Jar­dines town­hous­es on Rapsey Street, Curepe, where the rel­a­tives, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of their own safe­ty, re­called the or­deal.

One woman who was asleep at the time said she awoke af­ter hear­ing the back­door creak­ing open, but sensed that some­thing was wrong as she knew two rel­a­tives had al­ready left for work hours ear­li­er.

The woman said her one-year-old daugh­ter slept through the or­deal, as the ban­dits walked from room to room, forc­ing oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, in­clud­ing her 72-year-old moth­er, her sis­ter-in-law and her nine-year-old nephew, in­to the liv­ing room where they were robbed of jew­ellery and cash, which they say was in­tend­ed for bill pay­ments.

Af­ter gath­er­ing the valu­ables, the ban­dits left the same way they ar­rived. How­ev­er, the fam­i­ly said that neigh­bours heard the com­mo­tion and called the po­lice, who were dis­patched to the area with­in min­utes, lead­ing to the ar­rest of one man.

Of­fi­cers al­so searched an aban­doned gym on the near­by par­cel of land where they con­front­ed one of the sus­pects Sha­keem Gabriel alias “Kun­ta”.

Po­lice said Gabriel opened fire on of­fi­cers, who re­turned fire, strik­ing him. He was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, where he was pro­nounced dead.

Po­lice said both Gabriel and the ar­rest­ed sus­pect were from the Bangladesh com­mu­ni­ty, off Farm Road, St Joseph.

Al­though grate­ful for the rapid po­lice re­sponse, the fam­i­ly said they were not con­vinced by re­cent state­ments by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der that the re­cent­ly pro­claimed Home In­va­sion leg­is­la­tion was dis­cour­ag­ing crim­i­nals.

“It’s not work­ing. Crime is get­ting worse; in­di­vid­u­als are look­ing for an easy dol­lar.

“Those who not work­ing, they want to find al­ter­na­tive means to get mon­ey for drugs, for al­co­hol for their per­son­al busi­ness and they don’t care what hap­pens to oth­ers out there.”