Trinidad: 20 held in raid at La Romaine

By Staff Editor On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
Members of the Special Operations Unit and Southern Division Police during an exercise in La Romaine yesterday.
Members of the Special Operations Unit and Southern Division Police during an exercise in La Romaine yesterday.

(Trinidad Guardian) Po­lice blocked off streets in La Ro­maine, south Trinidad, for more than six hours yes­ter­day dur­ing a raid at a known drug traf­fick­ing zone. They ar­rest­ed 20 peo­ple, in­clud­ing sus­pect­ed gang­sters and drug deal­ers and seized an Uzi sub­ma­chine gun, three pis­tols, 74 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, three kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na, eight grammes of co­caine and a blue po­lice op­er­a­tions jack­et.

The raid was con­duct­ed by the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Unit (SORT) with aer­i­al sup­port pro­vid­ed by drones de­ployed by the Air Sup­port Unit. Of­fi­cers from the South­ern and Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Forces and Ca­nine branch en­tered homes, seized ve­hi­cles and or­der­ing sus­pects to lie on the ground. They blocked off sev­er­al streets, in­clud­ing Charles, Ethel, Claude and By­ron Streets.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents ac­cused the of­fi­cers of abus­ing the sus­pects. Jil­lian Dover said her two sons were among a group of men do­ing con­struc­tion work at a house on Charles Street who were all ar­rest­ed.

“I don’t mind they ar­rest them but they beat one of my sons and his face swell up. I was in church when I heard the po­lice come in here and ar­rest every­one,” she said.

Keino Mar­raster, who was sup­posed to be work­ing at the house, said: “I end­ed up run­ning late to­day. If I was there, they would have locked me up too.”

Mar­raster said the po­lice broke down doors and a woman with a ba­by be­gan to scream.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said her hus­band was tak­ing a morn­ing walk when he was de­tained by the of­fi­cers.

Po­lice left the area af­ter 2 pm but un­der­cov­er of­fi­cers con­tin­ued pa­trols up to late yes­ter­day. The sus­pects are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trate to­day on charges of pos­ses­sion of arms, am­mu­ni­tion and nar­cotics.

On Fri­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith an­nounced that with­in 36 hours all gang­sters would be ar­rest­ed.

He al­so warned that any­one who ob­struct­ed the po­lice would be ar­rest­ed.