Mixed reactions among residents to Maloney Buildings lockdown

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Res­i­dents of the Mal­oney Build­ings Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment have ex­pressed mixed re­ac­tions to the lock­down of their area, with some wel­com­ing the ef­forts while oth­ers com­plained of ha­rass­ment by sol­diers, re­stric­tions on their free­dom of move­ment and un­cer­tain­ty over how long the mea­sures will re­main in place.

The hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, lo­cat­ed in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-held Trinci­ty/Mal­oney con­stituen­cy, be­came the first area to be de­clared a closed area un­der the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act, 2026 on Tues­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, some res­i­dents ad­mit­ted to want­i­ng to see a re­turn of law and or­der to the area, but with a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few in ef­fect, they said it would ham­per their earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty and in­fringe on their per­son­al free­dom to en­ter and ex­it the area as they were ac­cus­tomed to.

Sev­er­al young men com­plained bit­ter­ly about the ag­gres­sive man­ner of the masked sol­diers who were dri­ving through the area, un­ac­com­pa­nied by the po­lice, or­der­ing them to stop con­gre­gat­ing out­side their re­spec­tive build­ings and to dis­perse.

One man, who de­clined to pro­vide his name but in­di­cat­ed he was wait­ing on his wife to re­turn home, ques­tioned, “So we can’t sit on our own block and have a talk? That is un­fair. That is re­al un­fair in this com­mu­ni­ty.”

Sev­er­al oth­ers gath­ered near­by shook their heads in uni­son, as they said the sol­diers’ be­hav­iour was in stark con­trast to that of the po­lice of­fi­cers, who were seen cruis­ing past, nod­ding and wav­ing to res­i­dents.

Asked to re­spond to the res­i­dents’ claims, Chief of De­fence Staff, Com­man­der Don Po­lo, said his men were there to “lend sup­port” to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and di­rect­ed all ques­tions to the se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer in charge of the com­mu­ni­ty lock­down.

Co­conut ven­dor Cur­tis So­grim, who op­er­ates along Mal­oney Boule­vard, wel­comed the lock­down, which he said had not dis­rupt­ed his busi­ness in any way.

He al­so dis­missed con­cerns that the com­mu­ni­ty would be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.

“I don’t see it as no lock­down. I just see it as the po­lice do­ing their work. There’s not re­al­ly no lock­down per se,” he added.

Two young men stand­ing near­by dis­agreed, cit­ing ha­rass­ment by law­men.

Asked to com­ment fur­ther, the men quick­ly walked off as a con­voy of marked po­lice ve­hi­cles turned on­to the street.

One said, “Yuh see how qui­et and nice they pass and gone...is cause al­lyuh (Guardian Me­dia) here...that’s why. If al­lyuh wasn’t here, dey jump out long time and pat­ting we down.”

Busi­ness­woman Tri­cia Kin­sale said while she ap­pre­ci­at­ed the rea­son­ing be­hind the lock­down, it had af­fect­ed her liveli­hood, as she sells chick­en and chips from 7 pm to 11 pm.

“It would af­fect us, but we know the po­lice have to keep the place safe, and we do ap­pre­ci­ate that, but in terms of us out­side, try­ing to make an hon­est dol­lar, it would af­fect us in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

She dis­agreed with claims that Mal­oney was tar­get­ed.

Res­i­dents, how­ev­er, ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the lack of in­for­ma­tion on how long the lock­down would re­main in ef­fect and how they were to ac­quire a per­mit to move around freely.

Yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­duct­ed a walk­a­bout in the area, dur­ing which time he was di­rect­ed to the lo­ca­tion where the firearm used in a shoot­ing on Mon­day was found.

The loaded weapon was found near a garbage bin in a bushy area at Ar­madil­lo Street, off La Re­source South.

Res­i­dents and passers-by looked on cu­ri­ous­ly as the top cop or­dered the area cor­doned off and wait­ed on crime scene of­fi­cers to re­trieve the firearm.

Con­firm­ing the re­cov­ery, Gue­var­ro said he was heart­ened by the feed­back from res­i­dents, who urged him to con­tin­ue do­ing what need­ed to be done to re­store a sense of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Mean­while, Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is ar­rived at the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day fired up and ready for bat­tle on be­half of her con­stituents.

She ac­cused the au­thor­i­ties of in­tro­duc­ing the re­stric­tions with­out ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tion, ques­tioned the avail­abil­i­ty of per­mits and the de­ploy­ment of sol­diers in the con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tion.

She raised con­cerns about what she de­scribed as the ap­par­ent tar­get­ing of her con­stituen­cy.

She al­so asked about body cam­eras for po­lice of­fi­cers and the out­fit­ting of two mi­cro-polic­ing units in the com­mu­ni­ty af­ter it was placed on lock­down. She added that this was a tes­ta­ment to the lack of prepa­ra­tion and readi­ness.

Gue­var­ro sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed that the TTPS had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 us­able body cam­eras and was seek­ing ad­di­tion­al equip­ment.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ques­tioned why such ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures were nec­es­sary in Mal­oney when oth­er ar­eas had ex­pe­ri­enced fa­tal shoot­ings, point­ing to re­cent in­ci­dents in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

She said, “I will ad­mit that there was a shoot­ing in Mal­oney. Two peo­ple were in­jured. No­body was mur­dered.”

Re­fer­ring to re­cent mur­ders in Freeport and Cou­va, she ques­tioned why sim­i­lar re­stric­tions had not been in­tro­duced there.