TENSIONS HIGH IN BEETHAM

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Five days af­ter an ar­son at­tack razed the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (TSTT) scrap yard in Laven­tille, res­i­dents of Beetham Gar­dens have ac­cused the po­lice and sol­diers of “tor­ment­ing” them over the last sev­er­al days.

Un­will­ing to be named when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, sev­er­al young men said, “Sol­diers com­ing on dey own now... mask up and with­out the po­lice.

“They rush­ing we when they see we... dey cyar be do­ing dat. A man wake up and come out he house yes­ter­day morn­ing (Wednes­day) and stand up dey do­ing nut­ting... jus so they take him and gone. He ain’t do nut­ting!”

The men re­port­ed that res­i­dents of Phase Five, Beetham Gar­dens, were the ones be­ing sin­gled out fol­low­ing the Oc­to­ber 24 in­ci­dent, which re­port­ed­ly caused some $20 mil­lion in dam­age to ca­bles and oth­er stored equip­ment.

Keep­ing watch for the po­lice pa­trols, which they said had in­creased since the fire, the men con­tin­ued to ques­tion if what the po­lice and sol­diers were do­ing was al­lowed un­der the law.

One man said the sol­diers were dri­ving through the area play­ing “gun-man mu­sic,” while an­oth­er in­sist­ed, “Dey want to run we down and gun we down.”

Phase Five re­sem­bled a ghost town yes­ter­day, with gates pad­locked and doors and win­dows tight­ly shut.

Two el­der­ly men shel­ter­ing from the rain re­port­ed the op­po­site to what the younger res­i­dents claimed, how­ev­er, as one said, “Nah... de area cool now man.”

His friend and neigh­bour said he was glad to see the in­creased pa­trols, adding that the on­ly is­sue had been los­ing elec­tric­i­ty for more than 24 hours fol­low­ing the fire, as his fam­i­ly had lost quite a bit in food items.

Oth­er than that, he agreed, “Things good.”

Mean­while, over at the TSTT com­pound at East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, bmo­bile tech­ni­cians were hard at work in­stalling CCTV cam­eras through­out the scrap yard.

Re­spond­ing to com­plaints by the res­i­dents, how­ev­er, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in charge of Op­er­a­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­mained “res­olute in its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to safe­guard lives, main­tain pub­lic or­der and pro­tect crit­i­cal na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture.”

“Our op­er­a­tional re­sponse to the sus­pect­ed ar­son at the TSTT com­pound is in­tel­li­gence-led, tar­get­ed and pro­por­tion­ate to the se­ri­ous­ness of the in­ci­dent,” Mar­tin as­sured.

She dis­missed claims by res­i­dents that the au­thor­i­ties were ha­rass­ing them.

“It is not di­rect­ed against the Beetham com­mu­ni­ty, but against crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty that threat­ens pub­lic safe­ty,” Mar­tin said.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that there may be con­cerns re­gard­ing the in­creased po­lice pres­ence and al­le­ga­tions of ex­ces­sive force, she said, “I ex­pect the high­est stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, re­straint and re­spect for cit­i­zens’ rights.”

She added, “Any al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct will be ad­dressed through the ap­pro­pri­ate mech­a­nisms.”

The tough-talk­ing Mar­tin stressed, “I wish to make it clear that pub­lic safe­ty is non-ne­go­tiable. Acts of vi­o­lence, ar­son and con­duct that en­dan­gers res­i­dents, emer­gency re­spon­ders or es­sen­tial ser­vices can­not be tol­er­at­ed.”

She called on res­i­dents and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to sup­port law­ful polic­ing ef­forts, share cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion and re­ject ac­tions that threat­en the safe­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of their com­mu­ni­ty.

“Our com­mit­ment is clear: de­ci­sive ac­tion against crim­i­nal­i­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty in polic­ing and the pro­tec­tion of every law-abid­ing cit­i­zen,” she said.

“We will con­tin­ue to ex­er­cise our op­er­a­tional re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with firm­ness, fair­ness and re­spect, recog­nis­ing that sus­tain­able pub­lic safe­ty re­quires both ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment and the con­fi­dence of the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.”

Po­lice sources yes­ter­day con­firmed that the re­main­ing sus­pects in con­nec­tion with the fire are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased as in­ves­ti­ga­tors do not have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to charge them.

This comes as six peo­ple had been ques­tioned in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent, with some re­leased while oth­ers re­mained in po­lice cus­tody as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued.

Mean­while, ef­forts to con­tact Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle on the res­i­dents’ com­plaints were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.