Trinidad: Gunning down of gangsters raises questions

(Trinidad Guardian) The mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion in­volved in the killing of Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres, his wife and two hench­men and the made for movie get­away prompt­ed ques­tions from cit­i­zens whether this was the an­swer to the out-of-con­trol gang vi­o­lence which left a trail of bod­ies in the first sev­en months of the year.

Not on­ly were po­lice able to iden­ti­fy the gang mem­ber who was re­spon­si­ble for Sand­man’s at­tack, com­plete with pho­to and mo­tive with­in three hours of the killing, they al­so lat­er linked it to the ear­li­er at­tack of 12 Car­li Bay fish­er­men and the po­lice killing of Sea Lots gang­ster Aki­ni “Dole” Adams.

Hours af­ter Mieres’ dra­mat­ic killing in the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day, po­lice went to Sea Lots to de­tain Adams, whom they iden­ti­fied as a sus­pect in­volved in the quadru­ple killing.

But ques­tions linger about how po­lice knew about Adams’ al­leged con­nec­tion.

Asked about the po­lice op­er­a­tions in Sea Lots, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young side­stepped this ques­tion, stat­ing that he would pre­fer if the TTPS speak about their op­er­a­tions.

“I did have a meet­ing with the head of se­cu­ri­ty this morn­ing and got a full brief­ing. But I would leave the po­lice to an­swer that.”

Young al­so re­spond­ed to claims that po­lice ex­e­cut­ed Adams.

“I don’t know any­thing about the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice car­ry­ing any such at­tempt as you are sug­gest­ing…any as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt. I know noth­ing of any ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings what­so­ev­er. At the end of the day, I trust the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to act with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law. And I have al­ways made that clear.”

Young said once the TTPS acts with­in the con­fines of the law “they will have my full sup­port.”

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who was on the ground with his troops as Sea Lots res­i­dents protest­ed Adams’ killing dis­missed claims that Adams was killed in cold-blood by po­lice of­fi­cers.

“The con­cept of ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings does not ex­ist and it’s fun­ny that cer­tain per­sons in com­mu­ni­ties go blind and mute when cer­tain gang mem­bers shoot at each oth­er. But when it comes to the po­lice, every­one seems to see some­thing. The on­ly ex­e­cu­tion killing is when gangs kill oth­er gangs,” Grif­fith said.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, res­i­dents belt­ed out anger at the po­lice.

“They say­ing how Dole and we went Las Cuevas to kill Sand­man but that’s not true ei­ther…why would we do that? We not re­spon­si­ble for the fish­er­men be­ing mur­dered too…them po­lice wicked and just want to blame us for every­thing,” he added.

An­oth­er young man said: “Jeal­ousy is a ter­ri­ble thing you know. Them po­lice test­ing our pa­tience.”

Po­lice sources had told Guardian Me­dia that Adams was linked to the gun at­tack of Sand­man in Las Cuevas on Thurs­day and one of the boats stolen from Car­li Bay fish­er­men was used to es­cape.

Armed ban­dits at­tacked a group of 12 fish­er­men on Mon­day and sev­en of them were forced to jump over­board their fish­ing ves­sel.

The bod­ies of four vic­tims have resur­faced while the search con­tin­ues for three oth­ers.

Five of the fish­er­men man­aged to make it to safe­ty. Six of the stolen en­gines were found in Sea Lots. Two of the stolen boats re­main miss­ing.

The Guardian Me­dia team was cau­tioned about Sea Lots Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty and on­ly re­turn with po­lice pro­tec­tion.

Adams’ rel­a­tives who were at Foren­sic al­so de­fend­ed Adams. They claim that Adams was try­ing to help the Cen­tral fam­i­lies of the fish­er­men, “Dole had noth­ing to do with the mur­ders. He was not a mur­der­er. He had an idea who was be­hind that at­tack and was try­ing to get to the bot­tom of it.”

“The po­lice pinned a lot of mur­ders on him but he nev­er killed any­one. He worked hard out on the seas, “ the rel­a­tives added.

But the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said the link be­tween Adams and the Car­li Bay at­tack was based on in­tel­li­gence.

“There are links be­tween the un­for­tu­nate, trag­ic and hor­rif­ic cir­cum­stances that took place with those fish­er­men and their en­gines turn­ing up in Sea Lots. There is a link be­tween the crim­i­nal el­e­ment and a par­tic­u­lar crim­i­nal gang el­e­ment and the hor­rif­ic in­ci­dent that took place with those fish­er­men and the steal­ing of those en­gines…and I am say­ing…the en­gines turned up in Sea Lots. The po­lice went to Sea Lots to re­cov­er the en­gine. I would leave it at that.”

Young said he was un­aware there was a fight for sea turf in­volv­ing Car­li Bay fish­er­men.

On Fri­day, dur­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion arms and am­mu­ni­tion and drugs in­clud­ing an AK 47 as­sault ri­fle and over 200 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion were seized.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were al­so de­tained for ques­tion­ing and re­mained in cus­tody last night.