Trinidad: Father, son to be charged after being caught at pool party raid

(Trinidad Guardian) A Val­sayn busi­ness­man and his son who were both de­tained in a raid by po­lice of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team(SORT) at La­dy Chan­cel­lor Heights, Port-of-Spain ear­ly this morn­ing are ex­pect­ed to be charged for the pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion.

Se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that the busi­ness­man and his son had been for­mal­ly charged in 2016 with sim­i­lar of­fences which are still be­fore the courts.

 
The men were held with 18 oth­er males and 22 women at a par­ty termed Se­cret Sun­day.

The oth­er males held dur­ing the raid in­ves­ti­ga­tors say will be held rel­e­vant to oth­er in­quiries and may like­ly be re­leased lat­er on.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say con­trary to re­ports the house was not a guest house, but rather a four-storey dwelling house.

“They had no liquor li­cense but they were sell­ing al­co­hol on the premis­es and charg­ing peo­ple to come in­to the house $60. They al­so did not have any fire clear­ance. We have noth­ing of­fi­cial to say its a guest house ei­ther,” a se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tor re­vealed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that most of the women are non-na­tion­als with no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in their pos­ses­sion.

They were al­leg­ed­ly en­gaged in lewd danc­ing, pos­si­ble pros­ti­tu­tion and child en­dan­ger­ment as sev­er­al of them are be­lieved to be mi­nors.

Sev­er­al oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies were al­so called in to as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The Child Pro­tec­tion Unit, Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit(CTU) and Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials were al­so in­ter­view­ing the for­eign na­tion­als.

Just af­ter mid­night on Mon­day, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence, SORT of­fi­cers head­ed by Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez con­duct­ed a sting op­er­a­tion at the house where the women, along with 20 men, were ar­rest­ed.

Po­lice al­so found and seized a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion, nar­cotics and a large amount of cash.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that an ad­ver­tise­ment was is­sued to high­light the event.

It was ti­tled “Can you keep a se­cret?” and gave de­tails for a “Se­cret Sun­days Latin EDM Pri­vate Pool Par­ty.”

It al­so ad­ver­tised that the event would be at a se­cret lo­ca­tion where “Se­cret Plea­sures Await” along with a What­sApp num­ber for in­ter­est­ed per­sons to mes­sage for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion and the lo­ca­tion.

It end­ed by stat­ing: “Make Sun­days your Se­cret.”

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith led the op­er­a­tions with of­fi­cers of SORT, the Port-of-Spain Task Force, Ca­nine and Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice.