Trinidad: 8 suspected gang members arrested in raid on mosque, masks seized

(Trinidad Guardian) A 16-year-old boy and sev­en oth­ers, who were ar­rest­ed dur­ing a po­lice raid at a mosque in Co­corite are ex­pect­ed to be placed on sev­er­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades.

Po­lice sources said ac­cord­ing to in­tel­li­gence re­ceived the eight are sus­pect­ed to be in­volved in gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing shoot­ings and mur­ders.

Po­lice al­so said they are be­lieved to be mem­bers of a gang that op­er­ate out of the Wa­ter­hole and Pow­der Mag­a­zine Phase 1 ar­eas.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 8 pm on Tues­day, a team of po­lice of­fi­cers from the West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and St James CID act­ed on in­tel­li­gence and went to a mosque where they con­duct­ed a search.

The of­fi­cers found al­leged­ly hid­den in the ceil­ing of the mosque, sev­er­al masks & ski masks that the of­fi­cers sus­pect were used dur­ing dif­fer­ent shoot­ing in­ci­dents in the said area over the past two weeks.

The ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent Thomp­son and In­spec­tor Vin­cent and in­clud­ed Act­ing Sgt. Samuel, P.C’s Mur­ray, Gilkes, Mc Clean, Gen­ty, Bart, Roberts, Joseph, and sev­er­al oth­er of­fi­cers.

On Tues­day, po­lice of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion called on mem­bers of the pub­lic to help them in iden­ti­fy­ing the peo­ple be­hind Mon­day night’s rapid gun­fire in the Co­corite area.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, dur­ing the hours of 9 pm on Mon­day, res­i­dents at Wa­ter­hole made sev­er­al calls to E999 re­port­ing un­known gun­men in the area shoot­ing at their homes and cars.

No one was in­jured dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

Po­lice said res­i­dents are very fear­ful, some of which have vowed to move out.