Commissioner of Police, Gary Griffith, is asking the public to ignore comments being made by certain persons who continue to give false information which are being published in the media, and which can cause fear and panic among the population.
The latest comments have come from Garvin Heerah, former Director of the National Operations Centre (NOC), who stated in a local newspaper, that Trinidad and Tobago nationals are at risk of being kidnapped or can fall victims to human trafficking on the island of Chacachacare.
The CoP states, “The role of the TTPS is not only to reduce crime but to take away the perception of the fear of crime. What we have been seeing in recent times is that a certain criminologist and a previous NOC head, have been making wild and reckless accusations and they are doing that just to make themselves relevant to get their stories published in the newspapers in a sensational way. As the Commissioner of Police, it is my responsibility to let the public know that all of these things that people continue to talk about, there is no substance, no accuracy, and when we contact them, they have no information, no intelligence, no facts and no data, at all.”
Commissioner Griffith says what this does is cause sensationalism and fear because of their own personal agenda. He added, “The
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latest from Garvin Heerah is that Chacachacare is a hotbed for human trafficking and persons are being taken. That can cause persons to panic and not go there. What he is doing there is totally irresponsible because we have no such reports of any one affected by crime being on Chacachacare Island over the last few years.”
Both the Western Division Police and the Counter-Trafficking Unit of the Ministry of National Security confirmed that there are NO such reports on Chacachacare Island.
The CoP says that Heerah also made unfortunate comments of Black Prados being involved in the sex trade in Trinidad. “This is very unfortunate. We need to stop the Rum Shop talk. If Mr Heerah was aware of all these Black Prados, one would have thought that he being the former head of the National Operations Centre, instead of going to the media, he would have come to us and give us the names of these individuals, the license plates of these Prados and for the police to deal with it. But again, rum shop talk will be published. When the TTPS contacted Heerah on Monday, just as we anticipated, he had no intelligence, no data, no information on his wild accusations.”
“What he has done is to make every owner of a Black SUV to be perceived as a possible suspect by certain members of the public. We are asking the public to totally ignore such comments and to take factual information from the TTPS and law enforcement agencies.”
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