Bold Theft; were Police really siding with the Crook?   

By Deandrea Hamilton & Dana Malcolm

Editorial Staff

#TurksandCaicos, April 7, 2022 – The Professional Standards Team of the Royal TCI Police Force has opened an internal review of whether members of the Force carried out proper operating procedures in response to a robbery in progress report.

Police Commissioner, Trevor Botting in response to Magnetic Media questions confirmed that a complaint from a homeowner has, “raised concerns with how the matter has been handled and our professional standards team is looking into the issue.”

The matter about which the Commissioner is responding involves a homeowner in eastern Providenciales who, on CCTV camera, caught two men ripping him off; they were about to make off with all of his plywood.

His alarm system triggered the alert and brought him to the scene where he was able to block in the white flatbed truck which was without plates and appeared to be unlicensed as Police, who had already been called, were on their way.

Those CCTV cameras were installed after the man suffered a previous robbery. He could not prevent the escape of one of the suspects but the other, the truck driver, remained at the scene.

The Police arrived and the homeowner thought the incident would be wrapped up, a straight forward open and shut case, but he was sadly mistaken.

After one suspect ran off into bushes and got away, the driver who stayed behind made repeated requests that his truck be released to him.

The man, who had also issued the CCTV video to the Commissioner of Police explained to Magnetic Media that he lost confidence when the responding officers seemed to side with the ‘thieving’ driver of the truck.

Police said, according to the complainant, the man was merely the driver and should get his truck.

The CCTV video clearly shows two men brazenly loading, sheet by sheet, the plywood from a stack in the yard to the bed of the truck.

The home owner, who told us about the ordeal on Friday April 1, explained he had to remind Police about the video which clearly showed the driver was an accomplice and co-conspirator.

What would follow would be more missteps by Police including showing up late to take the homeowner’s statement at the Grace Bay police station and despite being warned, entering his homeowners property without his permission in another attempt to extract the truck

While they claimed it would make up evidence, the man demanded a court order and said he discovered that at the time, the CID was not even aware of the matter.

For the homeowner his other concerns were that the police seemed to be in league with the thief, that according to him the criminal investigation department was not more immediately alerted to the brazen theft and that officers easily ignored his right to privacy presenting no court order to remove evidence in an attempted theft caught on camera.

Additionally, at least one Police officer when asked by Pastor Pedro Williams, who was called to the troubling scene when an unauthorized wrecker was trying to pull the criminal’s truck out of the victim’s yard, was curt and disrespectful toward the well-known church leader.

“This is a story that needs to be brought to the public.  Not for me but for the public because the public needs to understand their rights. We need to understand when the police are overstepping their boundaries. If it was someone else, this situation would have gone differently because people see the uniform and a badge and they run scared.”

The homeowner is also calling upon Police to initiative an information campaign to make citizens more aware of their rights; detailing how Members of the Royal TCI Police are supposed to act and what they are allowed to do when tending to a crime scene.

“I am not out to say shame the Police I just want people to understand this is your right, you have authority…”

The Commissioner, in that reply to Magnetic Media informed there has been an arrest in the case.

The Police should go another step further and make this individual known to the general public by exposing his identify upon formal arraignment.

According to the homeowner who shared his story, due to the massive increase in the cost of building materials, theft of supplies has spiked and is plaguing his Community.