Biche residents speak about life without crime: No problems in this community

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Sha­fi­na Khan, now 89, ar­rived in Biche in 1960 from San Juan.

There was no elec­tric­i­ty.

“In the night, I have a lamp,” she re­called.

The roads were dirt.

“When I came here, the road was just so.”

Khan said she and her now de­ceased hus­band cut bush by hand, plant­ed crops and sold what they grew.

“I get a piece of land, and I make my liv­ing out of it,” she told the Sun­day Guardian last week.

“It was hard, but we make out… make a gar­den, and we sell, and we live.”

Her hus­band died 40 years ago.

Asked if she miss­es him, she paused. “Miss him?” Then she added: “What I go (sic) miss him for, he was mis­er­able.”

She raised six chil­dren, and just like many of the young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty, most of her chil­dren moved away.

Asked if she would re­live her life the same way, she did not hes­i­tate to say she would do it again, the way she did.

Had she ever been robbed?

“No.”

Threat­ened?

“No.”

Vic­tim of a crime in any form?

“No­body ever threat­ened me.”

If some­one takes fruit from her yard, she does not call it theft.

“If they take two or­anges… I give them like a gift.”

In 66 years, she said she has nev­er lived in fear, nor has she been a vic­tim of crime.

It’s an un­usu­al state­ment from one of the coun­try’s old­est cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en T&T’s crime sta­tis­tics, and one com­ing from a com­mu­ni­ty which has car­ried a stig­ma of be­ing a mar­i­jua­na cul­ti­vat­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

When the is­sue of mar­i­jua­na cul­ti­va­tion was raised, res­i­dents’ body lan­guage shift­ed.

It was de­scribed as some­thing that ex­ists his­tor­i­cal­ly and present­ly, but not as chaos.

Owen Paul de­scribed the mar­i­jua­na cul­ti­va­tion pe­ri­od as “once up­on a time.”

“Drugs don’t go on in Biche. Noth­ing like drugs in Biche again. Yes, it may have one or two might take a lit­tle smoke, but noth­ing like drugs in Biche again…I don’t work any­where. I plant gar­den to sur­vive. The on­ly is­sue we have is to date we have no pipe-borne wa­ter. We de­pend on the rain.

“I al­ready live my full life here…it’s the younger ones I feel sor­ry for them the way things go­ing in this coun­try.”

Michael Pierre, who is the ACP for North­ern Di­vi­sion—which in­cludes Biche—de­scribed Biche as ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed.

“Biche are re­al­ly kind of an iso­lat­ed lo­ca­tion. It’s lo­cat­ed be­tween Rio Claro, Man­zanil­la to the east, Rio Claro to the south, (San­gre) Grande to the north. So it’s an iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty where there is not much ac­tiv­i­ty. The most you would have got­ten in that area ba­si­cal­ly used to be mar­i­jua­na pro­duc­tion. But there has been lit­tle to no crime in Biche over the many years.”

Shrink­ing com­mu­ni­ty

The Biche Po­lice Sta­tion sits on a hill over­look­ing the vil­lage.

Be­low it, there is a small su­per­mar­ket and an ATM.

Across the street, a wood­en bar op­er­ates from the ground floor of a two-storey con­crete build­ing.

At the heart of the com­mu­ni­ty stands Our La­dy of Lour­des RC Church, walk­ing dis­tance from Biche Sec­ondary School and the Biche Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School.

The en­trance road in­to the com­mu­ni­ty is worn away, but once in­side, many side streets are paved and wide.

Large con­crete hous­es sit be­hind tidy yards.

Veg­e­ta­tion grows thick and green.

It’s a com­mu­ni­ty that has held its beau­ty even with de­vel­op­ment over the years. Some road­side signs are fad­ed. Over­grown bush lines sec­tions of the road. But it is not ne­glect­ed.

Along Biche/Or­toire Road on Wednes­day, a so­cial­ly dis­placed man ap­proached the Sun­day Guardian with a wide smile.

For a mo­ment, it felt like cu­rios­i­ty from an un­fa­mil­iar ve­hi­cle in a small vil­lage. But he was sim­ply ask­ing for $5. He walked away emp­ty-hand­ed, mum­bling in­sults un­der his breath.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2011 Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus Com­mu­ni­ty Reg­is­ter pub­lished by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, Biche had a pop­u­la­tion of 2,770 peo­ple liv­ing in 814 house­holds at the time of the last na­tion­al cen­sus. The of­fi­cial reg­is­ter al­so record­ed 796 build­ings, 812 dwelling units, 53 busi­ness places and one in­sti­tu­tion with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Yet in­side the vil­lage, the tone is dif­fer­ent. The com­mu­ni­ty’s old­est res­i­dent has nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced crime in more than six decades liv­ing there.

Oth­er vil­lagers speak less about vi­o­lence and more about sur­vival — no pipe-borne wa­ter, youth un­em­ploy­ment, strug­gling farm­ers, re­liance on rain and gar­den crops.

The last vil­lage-lev­el fig­ures were pub­lished 15 years ago, and while up­dat­ed da­ta has not yet been re­leased, res­i­dents say their young peo­ple are leav­ing, and more strangers are qui­et­ly mov­ing in.

Jobs want­ed

If there is frus­tra­tion in Biche, it is not pri­mar­i­ly about mar­i­jua­na cul­ti­va­tion or vi­o­lence.

For farm­ers, it is about eco­nom­ics.

Dl­nd­lal Seep­er­sad, 65, has farmed most of his life.

“We don’t see no prob­lem in this com­mu­ni­ty,” he said flat­ly.

But when the top­ic shift­ed to em­ploy­ment, his tone sharp­ened.

“Even the youths and them, they don’t have no job.”

With­out jobs, peo­ple hus­tle. “The fastest em­ploy­ment peo­ple are get­ting is go­ing to the mar­ket and hus­tling.”

He de­scribed the im­bal­ance be­tween farm­ers and re­tail­ers. “If you sell a pound plant for $3 whole­sale, you go pay $7 re­tail…There’s no room for a small man in this coun­try.”

He point­ed to a deep­er vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty for the agri­cul­ture com­mu­ni­ty.↔ Con­tin­ues on page 10

“Right now 99.9 per cent of the things in the gro­cery are im­port­ed.”

“If we have a dis­as­ter, that is on­ly one week ra­tion.”

He did not speak about crime as a con­cern. He spoke about food se­cu­ri­ty as a threat. He wor­ries more about im­ports than bul­lets.

“Peo­ple need fi­nance… every­thing is mon­ey.”

Dur­ing its po­lit­i­cal cam­paign last year, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment spoke on two ini­tia­tives that could pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the Biche com­mu­ni­ty- the ex­pan­sion of agri­cul­tur­al fi­nanc­ing for small farm­ers and the de­vel­op­ment of a reg­u­lat­ed cannabis in­dus­try un­der li­cens­ing frame­works.

While the doc­u­ment does not name Biche specif­i­cal­ly, the cannabis pol­i­cy in­ter­sects di­rect­ly with com­mu­ni­ties his­tor­i­cal­ly linked to cul­ti­va­tion.

Sep­a­rate­ly, the 2026 Bud­get State­ment lists con­tin­ued re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of pools in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing Biche.

The 2026 Bud­get al­so ref­er­ences ex­pan­sion of court ser­vices in Rio Claro and San­gre Grande, the ser­vice hubs res­i­dents trav­el to for med­ical ap­point­ments and oth­er state ser­vices.

Pub­lic archives show that Biche has ap­peared in se­ri­ous crime re­port­ing over the past 15 years. (see ta­ble)

Be­tween 2009 and 2023, eight homi­cide vic­tims across sev­en in­ci­dents were doc­u­ment­ed in or di­rect­ly tied to the Biche dis­trict.

In the past decade alone (2014–2024), four mur­ders have been pub­licly re­port­ed in or near the vil­lage.

By com­par­i­son, near­by San­gre Grande — a larg­er ser­vice hub rough­ly 20 to 25 min­utes away — has record­ed more fre­quent mur­der re­ports in re­cent years, in­clud­ing clus­tered killings with­in sin­gle months. Biche’s in­ci­dents, while se­ri­ous, ap­pear spaced across years rather than con­cen­trat­ed.

Of­fi­cial records show that Biche has been linked to mur­ders and ma­jor mar­i­jua­na erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es over the past 15 years.

In 2019, $4.95 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na was de­stroyed in an erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cise. The amount of $7.65 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na was erad­i­cat­ed in two doc­u­ment­ed ex­er­cis­es alone.

Sub­se­quent an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions be­tween 2021 and 2024 ref­er­enced firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and mar­i­jua­na seizures in or near the com­mu­ni­ty.

Year Lo­ca­tion In­ci­dent De­scrip­tion Vic­tims

2009 Charu­ma Vil­lage Man shot dead at his home 1

2010 Cu­napo Main Road Young cou­ple killed 2

2012 Charu­ma Vil­lage Mur­der re­port­ed 1

2017 Pa­to Trace Charred re­mains dis­cov­ered; 1

two men lat­er charged

2019 Biche Dis­trict State wit­ness killed days 1

af­ter leav­ing po­lice safe house

2020 Charu­ma Vil­lage Woman killed in dri­ve-by shoot­ing 1

2023 Cushe Vil­lage Man found dead near home; 1

broth­er lat­er charged