Guevarro under fire for saying mosquitoes kept officers from drug arrests

JENSEN LA VENDE
Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

For­mer T&T De­fence Force Lieu­tenant Com­man­der Nor­man Din­di­al is blast­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro for fail­ing to make any ar­rests in two mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar drug busts over a span of 24 hours.

Din­di­al’s com­ment came af­ter Gue­var­ro claimed the TTPS made no ar­rests in drug hauls at Ca­roni Swamp and in Point Fortin be­cause he did not want to sub­ject his of­fi­cers to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting dengue from mos­qui­to bites while do­ing sur­veil­lance on the stash­es.

Dur­ing his speech at the open­ing of the City Po­lice sub-sta­tion in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro con­firmed the US-in­stalled radar was used to de­tect a sec­ond mar­i­jua­na stash in Point Fortin. This time, he said some 625 kilo­grammes were seized. This fol­lowed the seizure of 1,560 kilo­grammes of “creepy mar­i­jua­na” with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $171,205,320 in the Ca­roni Swamp on Wednes­day night.

Be­fore he could be asked why no ar­rests were made, how­ev­er, Gue­var­ro said it would have been point­less to leave his of­fi­cers wait­ing on the own­ers of the drugs.

Com­ment­ing on why no ar­rests were made in both seizures, Gue­var­ro said: “We had to go with a boat (for Ca­roni Swamp raid), and hear­ing this boat com­ing from miles away, you know the po­lice com­ing. You ain’t go­ing and come back for the weed. So, what the po­lice will do? We take it up and we move with it be­cause we’re not go­ing to leave it there for it to end up on the streets.”

He added: “Like­wise, same thing last night (Thurs­day). When you en­ter South Cen­tral Road, the first thing you see, men on their phones. So, why would I leave my of­fi­cers to do sur­veil­lance in the bush for two and three nights to get mos­qui­to bite and dengue when the sim­plest thing would be to just take the mar­i­jua­na and re­move it and lat­er de­stroy it be­cause it is not in the hands of those per­sons who would take it to mon­e­tise it and then vic­timise you, the pub­lic.”

How­ev­er, Din­di­al yes­ter­day said the ex­cuse giv­en made no sense, as the drugs could have been tagged and tracked, or the Reg­i­ment could have been used if the TTPS felt the sur­veil­lance task was over­whelm­ing. “That makes no sense. That shows you that you have no op­er­a­tional ca­pa­bil­i­ties and you don’t know about how op­er­a­tions work. It’s telling me that you’re afraid your men can get dengue,” he said.

“You have the army. That is rub­bish, you telling me that you could not have placed a track­ing de­vice on the drugs it­self and track the drugs when the drug is mov­ing?”

He al­so dis­put­ed the TTPS ac­count that the radar was used to track down the Ca­roni Swamp stash.

“The radar can­not see through the North­ern Range. The radar can­not see any­thing at all that’s in Ca­roni Swamp. So, they are bla­tant­ly ly­ing be­cause they are us­ing, or they’re try­ing to use a pro­pa­gan­da mech­a­nism to jus­ti­fy putting that radar where it is right now. The radar can­not, sim­ply put, see in­to the Ca­roni Swamp.”

Gue­var­ro, when asked why the boat with the 1,560 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na had no en­gine, said it was not a boat that brought the drugs to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Rather, he said, the drugs were mere­ly stashed on the boat it was found in. He de­nied that the video of the find was part of a re-en­act­ment, say­ing the po­lice ser­vice was not Hol­ly­wood. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­firmed that the drugs were found with the as­sis­tance of the US-in­stalled radar in To­ba­go. Dur­ing her speech at an award cer­e­mo­ny for out­stand­ing stu­dents in the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil’s (CXC) at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­vi­at­ed from her script to thank the US for the radar.

“To­day, I met with some of­fi­cials from the US Em­bassy this evening (Thurs­day) be­fore I came. That’s not in my script, but I can share it. Us­ing the radar that we in­stalled in To­ba­go, we were able to­day to drug bust $171 mil­lion worth of il­le­gal drugs.”

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day said the val­ue of the “sen­si­tive equip­ment” is now be­ing un­der­mined by the grow­ing ten­den­cy of some to over­sell, over­ex­plain, or pub­licly jus­ti­fy its in­stal­la­tion.

He first chas­tised Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der for say­ing the radar can be used in the kid­nap­ping of cou­ple Der­rick and Clari­bel Tardieu.

“Just as it seemed the sit­u­a­tion could not de­te­ri­o­rate fur­ther; the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is­sued a me­dia re­lease “thank­ing” the radar for as­sist­ing in tar­get­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments. The state­ment read more like a mar­ket­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­al than a com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the na­tion’s chief law en­force­ment of­fi­cer. I can­not re­call any prece­dent where law en­force­ment thanks a piece of equip­ment.”

He said this was not “ a triv­ial mis­step,” adding that law en­force­ment should re­tain the ap­pear­ance and re­al­i­ty of in­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence.

“The cred­i­bil­i­ty of the TTPS is not strength­ened when it ap­pears aligned with po­lit­i­cal mes­sag­ing. Sen­si­tive na­tion­al-se­cu­ri­ty as­sets must be pro­tect­ed from un­nec­es­sary ex­po­sure, not pa­rad­ed for pub­lic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. If we con­tin­ue down this road, the radar will lose its strate­gic ad­van­tage long be­fore it de­liv­ers its full op­er­a­tional val­ue. That would be a dis­ser­vice to the pub­lic, to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and to the very in­sti­tu­tions tasked with pro­tect­ing this na­tion.”

Alexan­der, who was al­so at the open­ing of the po­lice post, said he did not want to di­vulge who gets the da­ta from the radar, as that is a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. He added that per­haps in time he could re­veal that.

Asked if there were any oth­er radar sys­tems in­stalled in Trinidad that could have been used, Alexan­der said: “What we can tell you is this, tech­nol­o­gy is the way to go, and we are go­ing in that di­rec­tion to en­sure that our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers are tech­nol­o­gy-ready.”