Trinidad: Community leader, son held in early morning Sea Lots raid

(Trinidad Guardian) A well-known com­mu­ni­ty leader from Sea Lots and his son were tak­en in for ques­tion­ing by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing an­oth­er raid in Port-of-Spin on Fri­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at about 4.30 am an en­tourage of po­lice of­fi­cers moved in­to Pro­duc­tion Dri­ve at the com­mu­ni­ty leader’s home where they ar­rest­ed him and his son. One oth­er per­son was al­so held dur­ing the ex­er­cise.

This ex­er­cise, which has been de­scribed as an in­tel­li­gence and ev­i­dence-led op­er­a­tion, comes as the po­lice at­tempt to re­store peace and put a damper on gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties in the wake of an up­surge in mur­ders and oth­er re­lat­ed crimes in re­cent times.

Po­lice ar­rest­ed oth­er com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and sus­pects gang mem­bers in sim­i­lar ex­er­cis­es ear­li­er this week as well. This takes the to­tal to 31 peo­ple held so far dur­ing the on­go­ing ex­er­cis­es.