Strange Happenings

I am awake at 1:00 a.m. in the morning. This is normal for me because I usually go to bed early and then get up at these hours like a jumbie. In moving around my house I noticed that there was some abnormal vehicular activity on my street. Some people may say that I am a maco, others may say I am damn fas, however I consider myself to be hyper observant. Just as I was about to call the police I saw blue flashing lights, but I was still a bit uneasy. So I continued to pace around the house. Next thing my gate bell rings, I look out and see police. It was the kind of police I like too, the ones that breastfed on dasheen and look like they could buss somebody ass. The officers told me they would like to come in to check the premises and I quickly obliged. The officer who stood with me while his colleagues checked the premises explained that there was an incident on the highway involving a stolen vehicle and the suspects shot at the police. He asked me if I saw anything unusual, so I explained that I was going to call the police earlier. The officers completed the search then instructed me to lock up and proceeded down the street to continue the search.

This incident led me to a broadcast I received from some fool earlier that same night. “Big exercise in curepe on the main road side at least 40 cops searching cars .” As civilians we are not privy to the rationale behind the operations of law enforcement agencies. Why would we want to assist criminals by sending these types of messages? Some of us have persons on our Facebook and BBM accounts that we barely know and it is difficult to control where this information ends up. When we circulate these stupid messages we make the work of the officers futile. This is something that i have written about before in a post entitled “Aiding and Abetting the Criminal Element” so I will not babble on because my feelings are still the same.

I must say that I found the officers to be quite polite considering the circumstances and I was really impressed with the way they operated overall. I just hope that the officers were either able to apprehend the suspects or to at least survive the night without injury.

Aiding and Abetting the Criminal Element

I received a message via Blackberry Instant Messenger recently that was quite disturbing. I had previously spoken about this application concerning matters of the heart. Now I want to address matters relating to crime. It has become popular now for people to send broadcasts messages via BBIM. These messages range from stolen items to fete and club promotions to protest on the Beetham. My issue is when the messages involve the activities of the police. The message I received and I quote “Police road block on the bus route by aranguez savanah”. It is a quote so I had to spell Arranguez and Savannah wrong. The average citizen usually does not know the reason for a road block simply because the police do not need to indicate the purpose of a road block. Even if the road block is routine and they are not looking for anybody in particular the point is to catch people who break the law. That is the job of the police which would assist in them achieving their mandate of protecting and serving. Why would you want to alert people of this activity? Is it that we as Trinidadians are friendly with criminals and we want to help them avoid the police?

There are several implications of this activity that we often do not consider. The first is that supposed there is a rapist driving along his merry way. This person has gone undetected for several years, however his insurance happens to be expired. Stopped in the seemingly innocent road block he is apprehended and taken to the station where he is charged and his fingerprints taken. These fingerprints then happen to match a series of rapes in East Trinidad. Would the rapist have been caught if he was alerted to the road block in advance? Now don’t in your mind say this scenario is farfetched because the point is that we should not circulate this type of information as the only people who benefit from this are law breakers. We do not know where this information would end up. We do not know the motives of many of the people around us. The police already have a difficult time staying ahead of criminals who do not have rules, regulations and laws that govern their operations. Please I am begging everybody to be responsible in the information that we disseminate. Once the information leaves us we have no control over where it would end up. Finally people should question the type of friends they have that would benefit from receiving a message of that nature and possible have a chat with the person about their illegal behaviour or distance themselves from the person.

Needless to say the person who sent me the message to me got an earful. Admittedly she was not aware of the implication of transmitting the message. So my friends fix the ME in criME and stop making the work of the police more difficult.

Teen attacked in KFC

I would really like to know what is going on in our beloved country. We are all going crazy. People running into KFC to attack a 16 year old boy. Can you believe this nonsense? What can a sixteen year old do to enrage someone to attack him? Additionally I want to go back to the parents. When I was sixteen I had a clear mandate, go to school, learn, behave and go straight home after school. When I got into the house I had to call my mother to let her know that I was home. I never found out what would have happened if I did not go straight home because my mother made it abundantly clear that she was the boss and her rules were to be followed. Plus I am coward and I don’t like to get in trouble. So why was that sixteen year old in KFC at 2:45 p.m.? The news made no mention of him being a student of anywhere. We need to do something and we need to do it quickly. Additionally we as citizens need to stop waiting on the Government to find a solution. A simple start can be for us as adults to monitor the underage persons around us, provide guidance to them and act as mentors. That has nothing to do with the Government, it has to do with us being responsible citizens.

Criminal Deportees wreaking havoc in Trinidad and Tobago?

Criminal deportees have been a problem in the Caribbean for some time now. When the great US of A realized that a number of the persons committing crimes were non-US citizens they started to get rid of the persons by sending them right back from whence they came. Some of them would be sent back immediately, while other would be sent back after serving time in jail. The government of Trinidad and Tobago has in the past blamed the upsurge in crime on the influx of criminal deportees. I agree and disagree with this to some extent.

I agree with the theory that criminal deportees who are returned to Trinidad and Tobago do indeed contribute to the levels of crime and violence in the country. But I really think that a lot of times they are doing the only thing they know to survive. Many deportees left Trinidad and Tobago as young children with their parents. They have very little if not no memory of Trinidad and Tobago. While living in the United States they for whatever reason turn to a life of crime. Subsequent to which they get caught and are returned “home” a place they barely know. On reaching Trinidad they would be left in the airport with nothing. And when I say nothing I mean nothing. Not even toilet paper or identification. Imagine being sent to a country to live that you don’t even know, not knowing anyone and not even knowing the cardinal points to be able to move around. Obviously these people would do what they have learned and know best and that is to do whatever it takes to survive whether it be legal or illegal. I spoke to a deportee who told me that he felt like a child in a candy shop when he came back to Trinidad because things he used to do years ago as a teenager for fun Trinbagonian criminals were now doing to make serious money. Essentially he became a master and started a particular trend in T&T (So the man say eh). The government is not to be blamed solely for this because the deportees would be sent back without local law enforcement being notified so the persons could be monitored. In order for the notification to be made there needs to be a memorandum of understanding between the two countries. The sad thing is that we cannot do that. You feel if we had a US citizen in jail in Trinidad we could put him on a plane and send him back with no identification. The person would not even be able to clear immigration and customs.

On the other hand I do not think that the local criminals need influence from deportees to make “advances in criminal technology”. Essentially our law enforcement agencies are too caught up in bureaucracies that cause them to be slow to react to the ever changing environment. Plus these days the internet can be used for both good and bad. So while we law abiding citizens using Google to find school work or to impress our boss they using it to find ways to outsmart the police. Let us face it criminals are not stupid. Well most of them at least. They are just using their creative energy in the wrong way.

Recently the government, through the Ministry of Social Development introduced a procedure to meet deportees on arrival. The standard operating procedure is that a social worker from the Social Displacement Unit of the Ministry of Social Development would be at the airport to meet deportees. Upon which a social history assessment and a needs assessment would be conducted to determine the level of assistance required in order to reintegrate the deportee into society. Provision of initial accommodation is not usually a problem, as well as transportation to the accommodation site. However until the assessments are completed it cannot be said what would be provided to the deportees.

I am in no way trying to make excuses for deportees because some of them left Trinidad and Tobago as adults to go and make confusion in the people country and then get sent home and bring their nasty ways back with them. I applaud the effort of the government to implement something to deal with the deportees who return with nothing and no family to turn to. If this initiative prevents one deportee from resorting to crime to survive then for me it is a success. Do you really think that deportees have contributed significantly to crime in Trinidad and Tobago?

No more Cane equals more Crime

I did not realise that people from Laventille and Beetham were former cane cutters. According to the Express online our Prime Minister told the United Nations General assembly that the rising crime in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean was as a result of the loss of preferential markets for the export of banana and sugar. Although this may have been a general statement to include all the Caricom countries, I don’t like it. This statement implies that the former farmers of the now defunct Caroni (1975) Limited are responsible for the upsurge in crime in Trinidad and Tobago. We all know that is utter nonsense. Unless the cane workers formed some kind of gang that we don’t know about and are currently wreaking havoc on the nation. I know of one farmer who was a known criminal and that was Dole Chadee and who knows if he was really a farmer, that story could have been urban legend. This is probably why the crime is also getting out of control because law enforcement raiding Beetham and locking down Laventille all the time and they leaving the former cane workers to run amok.

The other problem I have with the statement is that it sounds like we are blaming our former colonial rulers for the rate of crime in our country. When as a people we would learn to start accepting responsibility of our own action or inaction as the case may be. We have been independent for forty-seven years, it is time that we move away from trying to be dependent on our former masters for anything. It also seems like we are trying to guilt them into give us back some sort of preferential markets again. Why we so? Why do we need preferential markets? Preferential markets don’t provide incentives to develop competitive production, it limits diversification, and it promotes a focus on primary products as opposed to refined or processed products. So essentially what we in the Caribbean should have done was instead of stopping the production of banana and sugar we should have continued and found something to do with the produce, maybe candied bananas. That way we could have told those people to hull their skin with their preferential markets. While there were obvious benefits to preferential markets, if it is no longer available to us then don’t cry over spilt milk. Make something else work for us. We should be looking forward not backwards. I expected more from Prime Minister Manning.

Should the Government “tap” the phones of Citizens?

This is being raised in light of what was said by the Minister of National Security, Martin Joseph in his budget speech in the Senate on Tuesday. He indicated that this initiative was based on the recommendations made by Major General Cameron Ross, which included the Omnibus Security Bill that encompasses a few pieces of legislation that are anticipated to be a major boost in the fight against crime. The bill of concern to me is the one that would allow for the “lawful” intercept of communication, the Interception of Communications Bill. Now something about this announcement tells me that they have been listening to our conversations for some time now but they are now making an attempt to do so legally. Small thing, I could live with that because I can tell you this, the intercept of communication is not concerned with whether you horning your woman, or whether you telling your best friend how often you go to the toilet. This is an attempt by law enforcement to use a tool that they may or may not have been using in the past to gather information that could be used legally in court against criminals. There are two problems with this that I foresee.

The first problem is the stupid criminal who was previously unaware that Trinidad and Tobago law enforcement held this capability is now aware. So what these criminals are going to do is evolve and find some other means of communication or develop some code to communicate. That is what criminals do, they always try to stay one step ahead of the law. But that is nothing I have faith in T&T law enforcement that they would handle this situation well.

The second problem is the alleged use of this tool by the Government to “spy” on their political enemies. This in the wrong hands could make or break an election. It could be used by the ruling party to gain inside information in order to gain an advantage in an election. If this indeed happens and we may never know if it does, it raises the question of how democratic is the election process.

Overall I think this is a good move on the part of the Government and somewhat of a feather in the worn and tattered hat of the Minister of National Security. Because something has to be done to combat this minority of people that are wreaking havoc on the rest of the nation. So they could tap my phone any day anytime whatever it takes to deal with this crime. What do you think about the proposed “lawful” intercept of communication?

Your contribution to crime in sweet T&T

Trinidadians love to complain about the crime situation in Trinidad and Tobago. But how many of us realize how much we ourselves contribute to the crime. There are some ads that I love in the daily news papers entitled “Fix the Me in Crime”. The little things we do on a daily basis that are against the law. Driving on the shoulder, littering, illegal parking, blocking the intersection when there is nowhere to go.

Every police officer standing on the shoulder so that we don’t use it as an additional lane is one less to treat with “serious” criminal offences. The police force and other protective services that we have are only so big and are constantly facing challenges of resource shortages. when a man or woman abuses their spouse a police officer has to get involved in some why once a report is made to the Police Station.

Then there is the other angle where Police officers are sometimes not assisted by members of the public. If you do not work with the police then they cannot do their jobs effectively. For example we are aware of certain things happening in our neighbourhoods and we as responsible citizens do not make a report in the nearest police station. Police cannot be everywhere for obvious reasons and we have to do our part to help them.

I am of the view however that a lot more can be done by local law enforcement to reduce the levels of crime and violence in this country that I love. But I have no control over the decisions taken and the policies implemented to reduce crime. So for now what I can do is take control of myself and be aware of the little things that I may be doing to make the situation worst and put a stop to it. Even with our friends and family we have to encourage them to do the right thing. Too often doing the wrong thing is glorified while doing the right thing is frowned upon.