Maracas residents call for more security

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Tyri­co Bay has been used by kid­nap­pers as a dump­ing site, pick up point and es­cape route this month alone, cre­at­ing a sense of fear in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The ten­sion in the Mara­cas Vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty has height­ened in the wake of the kid­nap­ping of San Juan busi­ness­woman Tara Po­li­ah, af­ter res­i­dents learned the sus­pects used the beach as a stag­ing area to take her to Venezuela be­fore they were in­ter­cept­ed at sea by the T&T Coast Guard.

Mara­cas res­i­dent Di­anne Ghany yes­ter­day called on the pow­ers that be to po­lice the beach at night.

“What they could do is, if they are not de­vel­op­ing the beach, they should at least have the beach locked off at cer­tain ar­eas. It is a lone­ly beach, it have no lights on the beach, we would like to get back lights on the beach. We al­ready have the po­lice pres­ence, which is good, but the beach should be locked off at a cer­tain time,” Ghany said.

She added that the il­le­gal night­time ac­tiv­i­ties was a cause for con­cern for vil­lagers, who of­ten have to en­dure loud mu­sic and now crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Just be­fore mid­night on Wednes­day, po­lice ar­rest­ed a to­tal of 11 peo­ple and res­cued Po­li­ah, who was be­ing tak­en to Venezuela on a ves­sel which was in­ter­cept­ed off Tyri­co Bay.

Un­der the cov­er of dark­ness on March 18, kid­nap­pers al­so snatched Cody Nar­ine from off the beach while he and oth­ers were lim­ing. A US$50,000 ran­som was de­mand­ed for him. He re­mains in the hands of his kid­nap­pers.

The third in­ci­dent was the dis­cov­ery of busi­ness­man Homar­dath Sookdeo’s body in some bush­es at the beach on March 8. His hands and feet were bound with rope and a dog chain af­ter he was kid­napped hours ear­li­er.

Beach­go­er Ray Stoute said he felt safe at the beach yes­ter­day but warned against vis­it­ing dur­ing the night. This sen­ti­ment was echoed by Pun­dit Sat Dubey.

“There is a rea­son why things hap­pen. If peo­ple come late in the night to do some­thing here or to hang out, they put them­selves in that sit­u­a­tion. Come at a rea­son­able time and you will be safe in Trinidad, any part of Trinidad,” Dubey said

Ghany said the area has not been the same since Sookdeo’s body was found, with vil­lagers feel­ing un­easy since then. The res­cue of Po­li­ah came as a shock, she said, adding that while po­lice pres­ence had in­creased since Sookdeo’s killing there, the num­ber of po­lice on Wednes­day night was some­thing out of a movie.

“We no­ticed some­thing was hap­pen­ing in the area be­cause we lost pow­er, the whole of the North Coast lost pow­er. It had po­lice and army, the place was busy and it had road­blocks. We didn’t know it was be­cause of the kid­nap­ping, it was on­ly af­ter we heard it on the news that we re­alise it was be­cause of that.”

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said the po­lice, De­fence Force and Im­mi­gra­tion, along with oth­er state agen­cies, are col­lab­o­rat­ing to en­sure crimes such as Po­li­ah’s kid­nap­ping would not re­cur.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les hailed the joint se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tion that led to Po­li­ah’s res­cue. She not­ed that the TTPS cred­it­ed the coun­try’s radar cen­tre as a key as­set in pin­point­ing Po­li­ah’s lo­ca­tion. She said this demon­strates Trinidad and To­ba­go al­ready has an ef­fec­tive radar sys­tem, un­der­min­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s ra­tio­nale for al­low­ing the Unit­ed States to tem­porar­i­ly in­stall one in To­ba­go last year.

“You would re­call that part of our de­bate was that we have this ex­ist­ing radar that can as­sist us. And what re­al­ly was the pur­pose of this new radar? I think we need to re­mem­ber what the Prime Min­is­ter said. The Prime Min­is­ter said, as the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, she could not share that in­for­ma­tion.”

While not want­i­ng to iden­ti­fy it as a trend, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day high­light­ed that the use of the beach by crim­i­nals should be mon­i­tored.

“What is a bit more wor­ry­ing for me is that kid­nap­pings that have this kind of transna­tion­al el­e­ment to it, where per­pe­tra­tors have the abil­i­ty to take a vic­tim out of the ju­ris­dic­tion, that cre­ates cer­tain com­plex­i­ties that law en­force­ment has to deal with the fact that they have no ju­ris­dic­tion once you’re out­side of the bor­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He added that with a strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela, the au­thor­i­ties may face is­sues get­ting the need­ed cross-bor­der sup­port should vic­tims be tak­en to Venezuela.