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Crime and the Big Boys - connecting the dots?
Posted: Sunday, May 15, 2005

By Linda E. Edwards

Newspapers sometimes get the story wrong. But...IF a boat belonging to a certain prominent family in ANY country was twice involved in drug running from another country to that country, and that family had its own pier at one site in a secluded peninsula where it is alleged that drugs come in under the protection of the armed services, that boat would have already been arrested by the drug enforcement agency of the country that is allegedly fighting crime.

The questions in my mind are: how come those people involved in the Shiprider Agreement did not intercept the shipment? People too powerful? Or boat too fast for them, or poor intelligence? Now what is the country waiting for? Did the state import and put out for sale hand grenades like the one used in the murder of the police officer? Or did they come in through one of the back doors? Is the pier that is a party place of the rich also a place where one can import for example a suitcase sized nuclear missile? A shoulder carried grenade launcher? What goes on there after closing time? Before opening hours?

Is the anti-crime movement meant to clean up everybody's act or just the petty crimes of the people in shanty areas? Chaguaramas has always been an odd place. The army revolt of 1970 took place there, ten years after the march in the rain. It is still not open to Mr. & Mrs. Average Citizen, because the army installations are there. It is, instead, a playground for the rich and the criminal? Is the army protecting them?

So, how much does one pay to get a license for a business under the army's nose, and who does one pay to turn a blind eye to what? And what if anything did this drug running by the rich and the powerful have to do with the murder, some months ago, of a policeman sitting in a car down there, allegedly by some of his own? What does it have to do with a body found floating off the pier some months back?

World-wide drug cartels are allegedly the richest "business organization" in the world. They can own entire governments. They can corrupt judges; they can order assassinations of people far from their scene of operations. They are entirely ruthless.

A recent FBI sting operation in the United States southwestern region netted sixteen law enforcement officials- army, police, immigration and naturalization, border patrol and sheriffs, deputies, who were involved in illegal importation of drugs into the country, using army transport part of the way. Talk about teamwork? The haul was worth about $16m US.

African American activists on the west coast had always accused the law enforcement people of importing and distributing crack cocaine in the African American community. Now what they were saying seems to be true. Young African Americans have given prison interviews saying that they were given guns by certain people, and helped to commit crimes.

Is that what is happening here?

We should pinch ourselves and come awake. No one is above the law, not a Minister of Government, his family, his boat. Not a pundit's daughter, a medical doctor or a judge himself/herself. Our forces must untangle the tentacles of crime at the highest levels, where there is no race or party, only profits.

We need to know what Mr. Chin Lee and family know about the Venezuelan arrested at their place of business, and why their family boat twice brought to Trinidad, people who are drug mules. We need to know from the Minister of National Security why this has not resulted in the confiscation of the boat, and it being sold as the proceeds of, or an accessory to, crime.

And we need to know if this whole affair has anything to do with the two policemen in Arima kidnapping a Venezuelan citizen.

I want the Downtown Merchants Association, the American Chamber of Commerce, the Trinidad Chamber of Commerce, the Jaycees, the Hindu Credit Union, the organized religious people and all the other organizations who daily lament crime to raise their voices on this issue. We may be dealing here with something bigger than Trinidad and Tobago, the undermining of a small state by those within it, for the greater good of personal riches and the advancement of a drug-induced comatose state of a country. This state of affairs could lead to the takeover of a small country by groups with their own self interest, in the manner of Margaret Thatcher's son in central Africa. Trinidad and Tobago's oil wealth could make it a desirable prize, and those who may sell it down the river would have to be operating from within.



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