(Trinidad Express) Cedric “Burkie” Burke, 36, and Keon “Baine” Bain, 31, who were arrested by police allegedly hiding out at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Friday, are expected to appear before a Port of Spain magistrate tomorrow on gang -related charges.
Detective constable Nobel Smith of the Port of Spain CID, on Friday charged Burke with being a gang leader and Bain a member of the Sea Lots, Port of Spain, gang.
Commissioner of Police Dwayne Gibbs, at yesterday’s daily news briefing regarding the operations of the security forces on Day 5 (8 p.m. on Thursday to 8 a.m. yesterday) under the State of Emergency, confirmed both men were charged by police under the Anti-Gang law.
Burke and Bain were nabbed by police around 11.30 a.m. on Friday in a room at the premium Waterfront hotel. Karen Hall, a 26-year-old San Juan woman, who police said told them she was the men’s secretary, was also detained at the hotel but subsequently released after being interviewed by Port of Spain CID officers.
Officers led by Snr Supts Glen Hackett and John Martinez of the CID and Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU), swooped down on the hotel on Friday and detained Burke and Bain.
Police said they also seized $16,000 at one of the two rooms booked by Bain on the 22nd and 16th floors of the hotel. The rooms registered under Bain’s name were 2001 and 1601, police said.
Guests and hotel employees looked on in shock as the three were led out of the hotel in handcuffs and into two waiting police vehicles.
Police also claimed that the suspects, who often exchanged rooms, had initially checked in on August 23, two days after Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced a State of Emergency in the country.
Officers reported they also found premium drinks which included Johnny Walker Blue, Moet, Bailey’s and Harvey’s Bristol Cream in the rooms. Records from the hotel, police said, indicated that Bain had been paying for their stay with cash on a daily basis—in excess of $900 per night.
Police said before they moved in on the hotel, the suspects were spotted liming, eating, drinking and smoking in their verandah.
Officers from the CID who were also involved in the exercise are Sgts Mervyn Edwards, Andrew John Andy Wallace, and including PCs Anderson Roberts, Nikruma Porter, Rickey Babwa and WPC Claudia Cabie.
The suspects, police said, had also checked in at the hotel in the company of five women, who left on Thursday, and other women were expected to take their place yesterday. Police said they received information that the men had also been ordering food from a fine dining restaurant and had even thrown a curfew party at their rooms earlier this week.
Officers from the CID, on Friday, also visited several hotels in Port of Spain and secured the names of guests in an attempt to determine if there were criminals and gang members seeking refuge at the hotels. Police said they will be keeping constant watch on hotels and guest houses in the Port of Spain Division.
Meanwhile, sources say the Government is facing yet another challenge—the amalgamation of criminal gangs who have vowed to fight back.
For the first time, rival gang members, particularly those who operated in the Beetham, Sea Lots, Laventille, Belmont and East Port of Spain communities, faced each other up close and personal after being placed in the same cells when rounded up by law enforcement officials, a source said.
According to the source, who was recently released after being in custody among gang members, the men have agreed to unite forces and fight their common and ever present enemy—the police.
They have promised revenge and retaliatory attacks against law enforcement officers, accusing them of detaining them without sufficient evidence to link them to criminal gangs.
They have also expressed confidence that within a mater of months, all gang-related charges brought against them by the state will be dismissed and/or discontinued before the courts.
The men have promised to wage war against the state “and promised to teach them a lesson for messing with the wrong set of people,” the man who asked not to be identified told the Sunday Express.
Police sources within the Port of Spain Division confirmed that they have received information regarding such statements made by gang members while in custody.
Commissioner of Police Dwayne Gibbs yesterday stated that as of 8.a.m. yesterday, police detained 684 persons, 267 of them gang leaders and members.
Gibbs stressed that law enforcement officials will be strong and resolute in their objective to root out those who are fleeing from one area to the next to escape the law. “So you going to take whatever means and try to hide and move into different areas. We will narrow down our scope, we will broaden our scope and trying to do it very strategically and systematically so that we don’t have people escaping the net,” Gibbs said.
