Abraham: Raghunanan Road residents welcome stronger police presence

Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) John­ny Abra­ham says res­i­dents of Raghu­nanan Road, Long­denville, have wel­comed the in­creased po­lice pres­ence in their com­mu­ni­ty fol­low­ing re­cent in­ci­dents in­volv­ing home in­va­sions.

Speak­ing af­ter a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing at the Raghu­nanan Road Recre­ation Ground on Mon­day evening, Abra­ham said res­i­dents ex­pressed sup­port for on­go­ing po­lice ini­tia­tives and praised of­fi­cers for their re­sponse in ap­pre­hend­ing sus­pects linked to re­cent home in­va­sions.

“We had about 150 per­sons in at­ten­dance, and the peo­ple were re­al­ly glad for the re­sponse the po­lice did the oth­er day,” Abra­ham said.

He said res­i­dents al­so pledged to work close­ly with the po­lice once law en­force­ment main­tained reg­u­lar en­gage­ment with the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Abra­ham, one of the main con­cerns raised by res­i­dents in­volved in­fra­struc­ture is­sues, in­clud­ing dam­aged lamp­posts and poor light­ing along parts of the road­way.

How­ev­er, he said res­i­dents were re­as­sured by the night­ly po­lice pa­trols now tak­ing place in the area.

“We have reg­u­lar pa­trols in the area, and the peo­ple are very pleased be­cause they’re see­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles pass­ing with blue lights,” he said.

Abra­ham said of­fi­cers at­tached to sev­er­al spe­cialised units, in­clud­ing the Home In­va­sion Team, An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit, CID, Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol and Long­denville Po­lice Sta­tion, have been de­ployed in the dis­trict.

He urged res­i­dents to make them­selves “hard tar­gets” for crim­i­nals by im­prov­ing home se­cu­ri­ty and re­main­ing alert to sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty.

Abra­ham ac­knowl­edged that some se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures could be cost­ly, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of cam­eras and alarm sys­tems, but en­cour­aged res­i­dents to adopt prac­ti­cal mea­sures such as us­ing air horns to alert neigh­bours dur­ing emer­gen­cies.

He al­so ad­vised res­i­dents to pay close at­ten­tion to un­fa­mil­iar per­sons in the com­mu­ni­ty and re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty im­me­di­ate­ly.

As part of the ini­tia­tive, res­i­dents and po­lice of­fi­cers formed three com­mu­ni­ty group chats to im­prove com­mu­ni­ca­tion and al­low for rapid re­port­ing of in­ci­dents.

On the is­sue of pan­ic rooms, Abra­ham said while such mea­sures could be use­ful, vic­tims of home in­va­sions of­ten have very lit­tle time to re­act once crim­i­nals gain en­try.

He al­so re­vealed that ef­forts are be­ing made to im­prove the 999 emer­gency re­sponse sys­tem af­ter com­plaints from one vic­tim who re­port­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­enced de­lays while at­tempt­ing to con­tact emer­gency ser­vices dur­ing a home in­va­sion.

Abra­ham said the NOC plans to hold ad­di­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings in ar­eas in­clud­ing Freeport and Bal­main Gar­dens.