Sangre Grande residents want dialogue on crime, safety plans

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Res­i­dents of San­gre Grande are call­ing for more con­sul­ta­tion with the gov­ern­ment on crime-fight­ing strate­gies, say­ing that a state of emer­gency (SoE) alone is not an ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Ojoe Road busi­ness­place yes­ter­day, head of the East­ern Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Ri­car­do Mo­hammed said while he sup­port­ed any ini­tia­tive by the gov­ern­ment to im­prove safe­ty and re­duce vi­o­lent crimes, he said there was a need for more in­volve­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the au­thor­i­ties and the peo­ple they serve.

Re­fer­ring to bomb threats re­port­ed at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day, which led to a no­tice­able de­ploy­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers to the east­ern town­ship, Mo­hammed said there were no clear chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to ease the fears of res­i­dents.

Not­ing that while he did not ex­pect the au­thor­i­ties to di­vulge sen­si­tive de­tails on se­cu­ri­ty, he felt there was a need for clar­i­ty in the mes­sag­ing from law en­force­ment and there­fore ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to meet and speak di­rect­ly with res­i­dents on what their vi­sion and ob­jec­tives are with the lat­est SoE.

“I think com­mu­ni­ca­tion is key. I think the Min­is­ter should come and have a town meet­ing in San­gre Grande. Let’s get our stake­hold­ers to­geth­er and see how we can help in the fight against crime.

“The stake­hold­ers, we are con­cerned, crime af­fects us sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Most of us who op­er­ate busi­ness­es un­til 9 pm at night and so on, we are very con­cerned, and we have seen busi­ness dwin­dle sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past few years.”

Mo­hammed, who has op­er­at­ed his busi­ness, Hill Top Phar­ma­cy, for years, says the changes have af­fect­ed San­gre Grande’s econ­o­my.

While he wel­comed the SoE, he said it should not be the on­ly tool used by the gov­ern­ment and said the lat­est re­sponse should yield tan­gi­ble re­sults.

In Damarie Hill, life­long res­i­dent In­dar Nan­lal said he would al­so like a more di­rect in­ter­face with the au­thor­i­ties, as he felt that de­ci­sions were be­ing made with­out the in­put of cit­i­zens who were im­pact­ed the most.

Re­fer­ring to a pos­si­ble crime plan out­side of the SoE, Nan­lal said he hoped that the au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing Alexan­der and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, heed­ed the calls of the pub­lic when con­sid­er­ing what was need­ed to ad­dress crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“They need to come down to ground ze­ro and meet with cit­i­zens of the coun­try. That’s the on­ly way to get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what’s need­ed to put things in place for this coun­try.”

Over the years, there have been sev­er­al dif­fer­ent in­stances of shoot­ings and mur­ders in Damarie Hill, in­clud­ing the mur­der of six-year-old Kylie Mel­oney in Jan­u­ary 2023.

Nan­lal says while he has not been di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by crime in the area, he was aware of the rep­u­ta­tion Damarie Hill has as be­ing one of the more dan­ger­ous ar­eas in San­gre Grande.

De­spite this, he was not con­vinced that the lat­est SoE would be enough to solve the neigh­bour­hood’s long-stand­ing prob­lem.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Patrick Naw­al, ad­mit­ted that he was a vic­tim of crime once, but was sat­is­fied with the po­lice pres­ence in his com­mu­ni­ty.

De­spite this, Naw­al, 79, ad­mits that he was hes­i­tant to share in­for­ma­tion with the po­lice on crime, not­ing that he pre­ferred to keep to him­self and avoid be­ing a wit­ness for his own safe­ty.

“I al­ways say, me ain’t see, so don’t ask me noth­ing. I live right across the road from the sa­van­nah, so I will say all I saw was the sa­van­nah whole day. He (the sa­van­nah) mind­ing his busi­ness and I mind­ing mine.”

Naw­al, who owns a small hard­ware and au­to sup­ply busi­ness from the front of his home, says he is a life­long res­i­dent of San­gre Grande and hopes that once he pass­es, the town­ship con­tin­ues to grow and be­comes safer.

Dur­ing the vis­it, sev­er­al po­lice pa­trols were seen. How­ev­er, sources said that no large-scale ex­er­cis­es were ex­pect­ed un­til cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion on crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties was re­ceived.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions over safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in San­gre Grande to the head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Christo­pher Pa­ponette, via What­sApp.

In his re­sponse, Pa­ponette said he for­ward­ed the ques­tions to the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit for a re­sponse on the mat­ter.