Maloney residents try to adjust to heightened police presence

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

De­spite their un­ease with a cur­few and 24/7 po­lice ex­er­cis­es in their com­mu­ni­ty, sev­er­al Mal­oney res­i­dents say they are do­ing their best to ad­just to the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments, while al­so call­ing for more peo­ple-cen­tered polic­ing tech­niques.

The call comes days af­ter the com­mu­ni­ty was of­fi­cial­ly de­clared a closed area un­der the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act.

Ac­cord­ing to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, the de­ci­sion to de­ploy po­lice to the com­mu­ni­ty was made to pre­vent an es­ca­la­tion of gang vi­o­lence in the neigh­bour­hood, in the wake of a shoot­ing in­volv­ing at­ten­dees of a par­ty at one of the build­ings in the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) project on Mon­day.

Re­fer­ring to the video dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day, Gue­var­ro de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion.

“It was not mere­ly a record­ing of a crim­i­nal act, it was a vi­su­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of or­di­nary cit­i­zens, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, be­ing ter­rorised. It showed women run­ning for cov­er. It showed lit­tle chil­dren flee­ing in pan­ic and it showed a com­mu­ni­ty be­ing held hostage by crim­i­nal­i­ty. No cit­i­zen in Trinidad and To­ba­go should live with that.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Mal­oney Gar­dens yes­ter­day, sev­er­al res­i­dents ac­cept­ed that such a large-scale po­lice re­sponse was ex­pect­ed in the wake of the shoot­ing, but ad­mit­ted that the cur­rent re­stric­tions to move­ment at cer­tain times were not ide­al.

Res­i­dent Karem Bethelmy said res­i­dents were sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­con­ve­nienced by the cur­rent arrange­ments, as she chid­ed those re­spon­si­ble for the shoot­ing.

“It’s self­ish and they’re not con­sid­er­ing their ac­tions and how it will af­fect work­ing-class peo­ple or peo­ple who are try­ing to bet­ter them­selves,” she said.

“The in­ci­dent on Mon­day, I was heart­bro­ken, I was dis­pleased about it and they brought this on us. Now we have to suf­fer be­cause of their ir­re­spon­si­ble ac­tions and it’s un­fair to us.”

Bethelmy said she ap­plied for and was grant­ed a cur­few per­mit, which grants her the abil­i­ty to leave the com­mu­ni­ty be­tween 9 pm and 5 am, when the cur­few is in ef­fect.

She al­so urged the res­i­dents to re­main vig­i­lant while do­ing their part to main­tain or­der in the neigh­bour­hood, to pre­vent pro­longed, un­pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ences with the po­lice.

“All we can do is pray. We just have to pray and hope that peo­ple’s mind­sets change, es­pe­cial­ly the young peo­ple’s mind­sets, be­cause with their ac­tions there are con­se­quences. So I hope they re­al­ly re­flect and check them­selves.”

One res­i­dent of Pon­derosa Heights, off Ja­cobin Av­enue, who asked not to be named, agreed with Bethelmy, not­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of Mal­oney res­i­dents were not pleased with the cur­rent arrange­ments and were un­hap­py with the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for the shoot­ing that led to the lock­down of their com­mu­ni­ty.

“I don’t have a prob­lem with them (the po­lice) do­ing their job, we just have to abide with it for the time be­ing, obey and do the cor­rect thing,” the res­i­dent said.

“If we had done the cor­rect thing, all of this could have been avoid­ed. I hop­ing these peo­ple learn their les­son be­cause it re­al­ly cost the whole com­mu­ni­ty, be­cause if peo­ple had un­der­stand­ing and could walk away from dotish­ness, then we wouldn’t be un­der­neath this or­der and feel­ing like how we feel­ing to­day.”

The res­i­dent said he was an em­ploy­ee of a pop­u­lar fast food fran­chise, not­ing that man­age­ment had ad­just­ed his shift ros­ter to bet­ter fa­cil­i­tate him be­ing able to re­turn home in time to com­ply with the cur­few.

But even with this arrange­ment, he said the re­stric­tions were not com­fort­able, not­ing he of­ten en­joyed go­ing for walks and vis­it­ing friends af­ter dark.

“It feel­ing like you al­ready make a jail in the free world. You locked up and can’t do as you please. Every­body just kind of un­com­fort­able in a sense... we have to guess what is go­ing on, they just spring this on us one night and we have to live with it.”

While in the neigh­bour­hood, po­lice were seen con­duct­ing sev­er­al search­es and road­blocks with sup­port from the TTPS Ca­nine Unit at build­ings along Mal­oney Boule­vard, near the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

Of­fi­cers said a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na was con­fis­cat­ed but no one was ar­rest­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, a pis­tol and two rounds of am­mu­ni­tion were found and seized in a bushy area on Ar­madil­lo Street, off La Re­source South. The pis­tol, po­lice said, is be­lieved to have been used in the shootout that sparked the po­lice lock­down of the com­mu­ni­ty and be sent for bal­lis­tic and foren­sic analy­sis, as en­quiries are un­der­way to ver­i­fy whether it was used in gun crimes in Mal­oney.

Res­i­dent Rick Daniel, who earns mon­ey col­lect­ing glass bot­tles and re­cy­cling them, said while he was not op­posed to the po­lice do­ing their jobs, he was con­cerned about ag­gres­sive polic­ing tac­tics from young, over-en­thu­si­as­tic po­lice and sol­diers.

Re­call­ing a re­cent in­stance where bags of glass bot­tles and dis­card­ed ap­pli­ances he col­lect­ed were al­leged­ly thrown away in a drain by po­lice on pa­trol, Daniel said such in­ci­dents were un­nec­es­sary and on­ly fos­tered deep­er re­sent­ment among res­i­dents.

He al­so claimed that sol­diers and po­lice were break­ing up gath­er­ings of peo­ple even out­side of cur­few hours.

“Every­body have their work to do, even the po­lice, but it have young po­lice and young sol­diers com­ing and if you hear how they deal­ing with you, say­ing, ‘Go home!,’ I sure I old­er than plen­ty of them and they talk­ing to me as if I is their child,” he said.

“You have to deal with peo­ple bet­ter than that. It’s big peo­ple you all deal­ing with in a com­mu­ni­ty at the end of the day.”

One mi­ni-mart own­er, who iden­ti­fied her­self on­ly as Claire, told Guardian Me­dia that she al­so no­ticed the trend of po­lice of­fi­cers dis­pers­ing small gath­er­ings, adding this could pos­si­bly harm busi­ness­es in the long term.

“Peo­ple fraid to come out be­cause the po­lice and them ha­rass­ing them when they out­side and send­ing them back in­doors.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia while vis­it­ing a new­ly con­struct­ed mi­cro-polic­ing unit in the carpark be­tween Build­ings 18 and 19, off Flamin­go Boule­vard, act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent Steve McKen­zie said, “We ask for co-op­er­a­tion, we ask for your pa­tience and most im­por­tant­ly that you just as­sist us as we seek to as­sist you.

“There would be a mea­sure of in­con­ve­nience by what we do, but of course the in­con­ve­nience is geared to­wards ul­ti­mate­ly bring­ing back a sense of safe­ty and nor­mal­cy to the com­mu­ni­ty so just bear with us.”

When asked if there was any ten­ta­tive time­line for the du­ra­tion of op­er­a­tions in Mal­oney, McKen­zie said the de­ci­sion to end the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments lay with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

“Once he is sat­is­fied that we’re in a place where there’s a lev­el of nor­mal­cy in the com­mu­ni­ty where po­lice op­er­a­tions can man­age the crime ef­fec­tive­ly then through a gazette, the closed space would be nor­malised, but un­til such time we op­er­ate on the in­struc­tions of the Com­mis­sion­er and we en­force the law as it is writ­ten.”

While labour­ers were ob­served con­duct­ing mi­nor works on the roof of the mi­cro-polic­ing unit yes­ter­day, McKen­zie said the unit was ready to fa­cil­i­tate po­lice and De­fence Force mem­bers who would use the post to en­hance cov­er­age as the spe­cial op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue.

“This is just one of the tools avail­able to us as law en­force­ment to as­sist the Mal­oney com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

“We just went in­to the space to be­gin to put things in place so we can make use of the space so we can de­ploy peo­ple and serve the com­mu­ni­ty as best as we can.”

McK­ezen­zie vis­it­ed the unit along with oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the T&T Reg­i­ment.