Belle Vue resident raises gang violence fears

Shane Su­perville

A Belle Vue res­i­dent has called for a per­ma­nent po­lice pres­ence in the St James com­mu­ni­ty, say­ing fears of gang vi­o­lence re­main high fol­low­ing a re­cent shoot­ing near her home.

The is­sue was raised dur­ing a TTPS pub­lic town hall meet­ing at the Belle Vue/Dibe Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Wednes­day night.

The res­i­dent, who iden­ti­fied her­self on­ly as “Jami­la”, said a re­cent shoot­ing out­side her home had height­ened fears among res­i­dents. She said her broth­er was out­side at the time but was un­harmed.

“I am so para­noid now... I was nev­er the fear­ful type, but what if I was out­side at that time? I would have been an­oth­er sta­tis­tic, a young woman like me... You see where I’m com­ing from?”

Jami­la called on po­lice to main­tain a ve­hi­cle at the foot of Belle Vue Hill on a per­ma­nent ba­sis, say­ing the po­lice pres­ence typ­i­cal­ly in­creas­es af­ter shoot­ings but does not last.

“I would like you all to at least have a (po­lice) jeep, be­cause af­ter shoot­ings you all have a jeep at the foot of Belle Vue Hill for about a week and they go away and that’s it.”

Head of the West­ern Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Sylvester Williams, ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges posed by vi­o­lent crime but said po­lice re­sources were lim­it­ed.

Williams said pa­trols fre­quent­ly vis­it Belle Vue and oth­er ar­eas, but po­lice some­times have to shift re­sources when vi­o­lence flares up else­where.

“I know that the pa­trols do fre­quent that area and many oth­er ar­eas, but you see the thing is with the lim­it­ed re­sources, some­times the vi­o­lence would flare up in terms of vi­o­lence and po­lice would have to fo­cus their ef­forts in that area, but the thing with crime is while they are do­ing that an­oth­er area would flare up and we on­ly have so much re­sources.”