Cops, Defence Force probe robbery by ‘soldiers’ in Maloney

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the De­fence Force have launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine if four cam­ou­flage-clad men in­volved in a Mal­oney rob­bery and who fled in what ap­peared to be a Reg­i­ment-is­sued ve­hi­cle were sol­diers or im­per­son­ators.

Po­lice said the vic­tims, ages 19 and 32 years old, were sit­ting with oth­ers on the sec­ond floor of Build­ing 12, Mal­oney Gar­dens, around 10.45 pm when they were ap­proached by four masked men in cam­ou­flage cloth­ing.

The men re­port­ed­ly iden­ti­fied them­selves as sol­diers but did not pro­vide any of­fi­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

They then stole $6,000 from one of the men and $1,000 from the oth­er be­fore get­ting in­to what by­standers de­scribed to po­lice as a “marked Reg­i­ment ve­hi­cle,” bear­ing li­cence plate - 5TTR275 - and dri­ving off.

Po­lice said the ve­hi­cle was seen along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way by eye­wit­ness­es be­fore they even­tu­al­ly lost track of it.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, ACP in charge of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, Richard Smith, said while it was un­clear whether the sus­pects in­volved were le­git­i­mate sol­diers or crim­i­nals in dis­guise, he said the po­lice were de­ter­mined to bring them to jus­tice, re­gard­less of who they were.

“We’re look­ing at peo­ple wear­ing uni­form, which may be fake mil­i­tary of­fi­cers, or it could be the re­al thing, and they’re com­mit­ting crime.

“We’re deal­ing with them just like any­body else; they would be ar­rest­ed and charged.”

Smith al­so not­ed that the trend of crim­i­nals im­per­son­at­ing law en­force­ment, whether po­lice or sol­diers, was a ma­jor con­cern that could po­ten­tial­ly un­der­mine the ef­fec­tive­ness of se­cu­ri­ty forces in ad­dress­ing crime.

Re­fer­ring to a pol­i­cy im­ple­ment­ed last year by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to lim­it the use of po­lice Bat­tle Dress Uni­forms (tac­ti­cal uni­forms) on­ly to spe­cialised po­lice units, Smith said such de­ci­sions were crit­i­cal to pre­vent­ing mis­use by crim­i­nals, but ac­knowl­edged that “fake” po­lice and sol­diers were still a chal­lenge.

“We know it’s some­thing that can de­ceive the pub­lic, and when we have the pub­lic be­ing de­ceived by mil­i­tary wear and po­lice uni­forms, it puts us in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion, be­cause when we’re per­form­ing our le­git­i­mate du­ties, how are mem­bers of the pub­lic sup­posed to know who are the re­al po­lice and who are the crim­i­nals?”

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “deeply con­cern­ing”.

Alexan­der said that while he was un­aware of the de­tails of the in­ci­dent, he was hope­ful that the po­lice could prompt­ly ad­dress the mat­ter, as it could have se­ri­ous long-term con­se­quences on the per­cep­tion of law en­force­ment.

“This would be con­cern­ing to any na­tion when sol­diers, whether re­al or fake, are com­mit­ting of­fences against peo­ple.

“One has to ask the ques­tion, if they are in fact im­per­son­ators, then where did they get the ve­hi­cle from? Are they re­al­ly mem­bers of the De­fence Force, and if not, was a ve­hi­cle parked some­where for ser­vice and used by oth­er per­sons?

“I know the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his ex­ec­u­tive would look deeply at this be­cause we don’t want to erode the trust and con­fi­dence that the pub­lic has in law en­force­ment when we see what is hap­pen­ing with crime in T&T.”

He al­so urged le­git­i­mate sol­diers to main­tain in­tegri­ty and steer clear of crim­i­nal­i­ty, not­ing that the pub­lic re­lied on them for their sup­port.

“If this were re­al mem­bers of the De­fence Force who did this, not what you signed up for, this is not your oath of of­fice, and this is not how you de­fend your na­tion.”

Alexan­der al­so urged the pub­lic to come for­ward with any in­for­ma­tion and share it with the po­lice, as he an­nounced plans to launch a 24-hour hot­line through his min­istry for the pub­lic to re­port crime and make anony­mous tips.

Guardian Me­dia sent sev­er­al ques­tions to a De­fence Force spokesper­son, who ad­vised that they be di­rect­ed to the pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer of the Reg­i­ment as the in­ci­dent di­rect­ly im­pli­cates sol­diers.

How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse from the Reg­i­ment’s spokesper­son to ques­tions sent via email and What­sApp.