RECKLESS GANG ATTACK!

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she was grate­ful that no one was hurt dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar fire at the ca­ble yard of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of T&T (TSTT) in Laven­tille, say­ing the “reck­less” act was car­ried out by a few gang mem­bers.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed those set­ting the fire as “gang mem­bers,” who en­dan­gered hun­dreds of in­no­cent peo­ple in the Beetham Gar­dens and neigh­bour­ing Laven­tille.

She not­ed that law-abid­ing, hard-work­ing peo­ple lived in these com­mu­ni­ties and was pleased that they were un­harmed, but stressed the dan­ger that on­ly a few peo­ple could pose to the so­ci­ety.

“I hope they don’t have to suf­fer again for the reck­less­ness of a few wicked peo­ple from their com­mu­ni­ties,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so con­firmed that she re­ceived a re­port on the in­ci­dent but would not be shar­ing any de­tails.

“The in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues and the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices are still search­ing for some per­sons,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Up to press time last evening, of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain di­vi­sion con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that while three sus­pects were in cus­tody, they were not yet charged as the en­quiry was on­go­ing.

The blaze be­gan when per­sons de­scribed by po­lice as “Beetham res­i­dents” con­front­ed work­men con­tract­ed to clear cop­per ca­bles on the TSTT com­pound work cen­tre just af­ter 5 pm on Sat­ur­day. 

Po­lice said the res­i­dents even­tu­al­ly threw lit Molo­tov cock­tails over the wall and on­to the yard, which ig­nit­ed the stored ca­ble and oth­er ma­te­ri­als. 

These ini­tial fires were quick­ly ex­tin­guished by work­ers with fire ex­tin­guish­ers. How­ev­er, more cock­tails that were not ini­tial­ly picked up even­tu­al­ly caused larg­er fires.

Fire of­fi­cers from the Ch­aguara­mas, Four Roads, Wright­son Road and San Juan Fire Sta­tions were called in and ex­tin­guished the blaze.

A sub­se­quent po­lice ex­er­cise in the Beetham Gar­dens led to the ar­rest of three peo­ple.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ac­knowl­edged that the fires caused a dis­rup­tion to the elec­tri­cal ser­vice in the Beetham Gar­dens for sev­er­al hours.

The length of time it took to re­store pow­er to Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dents has led to a po­lit­i­cal bat­tle be­tween Port-of-Spain MP Ka­reem Mar­celle and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

Mean­while, Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son says pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers tasked with pro­tect­ing ca­bles and cop­per stock­piles at TSTT com­pounds face sig­nif­i­cant risks and has called on au­thor­i­ties to work more close­ly with se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel on the ground.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Richard­son ref­er­enced a shoot­ing in­volv­ing se­cu­ri­ty guards and crim­i­nals at the TSTT work cen­tre along the East­ern Main Road in Laven­tille, sev­er­al weeks be­fore Sat­ur­day’s ar­son at­tack.

He said the lu­cra­tive il­le­gal scrap met­al trade con­tin­ued to dri­ve crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, mak­ing such fa­cil­i­ties at­trac­tive tar­gets.

“Of course, we have se­ri­ous con­cerns, giv­en the fact that of­fi­cers are out in these en­vi­ron­ments where mis­cre­ants are con­stant­ly tar­get­ing them be­cause cop­per is high­ly valu­able,” Richard­son said.

“You’re hear­ing that there was $20 mil­lion worth of cop­per ly­ing out­side there, and our in­for­ma­tion is that the fig­ure may be even high­er.

“These crim­i­nals will look for every av­enue to earn, and the peo­ple en­trust­ed with se­cur­ing these items are the es­tate po­lice. That’s why we have al­ways said we are on the front­line when these in­di­vid­u­als car­ry out their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. The po­lice are usu­al­ly called in af­ter­wards for sup­port or in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but when these crim­i­nals ar­rive, the first line of de­fence is the es­tate po­lice.”

On Sun­day, for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les urged TSTT to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty at its fa­cil­i­ties to pre­vent sim­i­lar in­ci­dents.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Richard­son said even if ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were de­ployed, they must be prop­er­ly equipped and sup­port­ed through clos­er co­or­di­na­tion with law en­force­ment and oth­er state agen­cies.

“Make sure they are rest­ed in the first place and that they have suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion. In­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing must al­so be shared with them so they can as­sist the State in pre­vent­ing and re­spond­ing to these sit­u­a­tions.”

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) ex­pressed con­cern over the grow­ing num­ber of cop­per thefts, warn­ing that the trend pos­es a se­ri­ous threat to the econ­o­my.

In a me­dia re­lease, the as­so­ci­a­tion said those scep­ti­cal about the wors­en­ing prob­lem should speak with air-con­di­tion­ing sup­pli­ers.

“Cop­per theft has reached such pro­por­tions that sev­er­al com­pres­sor com­po­nents and cop­per pipes are now out of stock. The at­tack on the TSTT ca­ble ware­house could in­di­cate that there is no more cop­per left to steal else­where,” DO­MA said.

DO­MA al­so ad­dressed the com­mon­ly cit­ed link be­tween un­em­ploy­ment and crime, ac­knowl­edg­ing the chal­lenges posed by job­less­ness but ar­gu­ing that es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty was fur­ther un­der­min­ing eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“We are of the view that we are in a gen­uine state of para­dox. Yes, we have un­em­ploy­ment, but the lack of jobs is be­ing made worse by the may­hem and chaos of the present sit­u­a­tion. We must ad­dress the lat­ter if we are to help re­solve the for­mer,” DO­MA said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it re­mained will­ing to work with se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and oth­er stake­hold­ers to ad­dress threats to the na­tion’s safe­ty and eco­nom­ic well-be­ing.