Residents in Morvant, Bamboo, Aranguez support police-army posts

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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While politi­cians de­bate the lo­gis­ti­cal ma­noeu­vring and sta­tis­ti­cal ben­e­fits of 30 joint po­lice and army posts, those who will be di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by the ini­tia­tive are ex­press­ing strong sup­port for the plan.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the lo­ca­tions for 24 of the 30 pro­posed posts. The Gov­ern­ment in­tends to es­tab­lish the joint Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) posts over the next four months as part of its crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed three of the pro­posed sites and spoke with res­i­dents and busi­ness op­er­a­tors who would use and ben­e­fit from the posts.

In Mor­vant, Ul­ric Sta­ple­ton said he wants a po­lice post to re­turn to the com­mu­ni­ty af­ter it was re­moved years ago.

Last month, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der con­firmed that law en­force­ment was mon­i­tor­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty in Mor­vant, nam­ing sev­er­al peo­ple whom he de­scribed as hav­ing no re­gard for hu­man life. This came af­ter three men were killed at a Unipet gas sta­tion at the cor­ner of the East­ern Main Road and Mor­vant Old Road on Ju­ly 18.

Days lat­er, a man iden­ti­fied as Frankie Bartholomew, alias “Fishie”, was shot and wound­ed in Mor­vant.

Sta­ple­ton said, “It had one in the (Com­mu­ni­ty) Cen­tre yard, and no chupid­ness used to go on and we did glad. But as they move it, thing gone back hel­ter-skel­ter.”

De­spite the Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion be­ing a two-minute dri­ve away, the 62-year-old grand­fa­ther said he still wants the pres­ence of law en­force­ment in the area.

He added that he is too old to be duck­ing from bul­lets.

At Bam­boo Boule­vard near the Grand Bazaar in­ter­change, where a joint pa­trol post is pro­posed to be es­tab­lished, busi­ness­woman Vic­to­ria Gob­in and ven­dor Mukesh Sam­path both said it is a need­ed mea­sure of se­cu­ri­ty.

Gob­in said, “I be­lieve it will help a lot with crime in the area. Some­times we are here from 4 am and when we come is a lot of peo­ple just won­der­ing the place.”

In Feb­ru­ary, Cur­tis “Bird” Pierre, of Gopaul Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin, was am­bushed by two gun­men af­ter col­lect­ing piz­za at Naafa Piz­za, at the cor­ner of Ram­nar­ine Dri­ve and Bam­boo Boule­vard.

Sam­path, who stood just out­side Grand Bazaar sell­ing pi­men­tos and man­goes, said the pres­ence of po­lice would help make the area feel safer.

He said the idea is a “very good one” and that the area has had crime for many years.

Mean­while, busi­ness­man Ma­hesh Chotoo said while the Aranguez area is not rid­dled with crime, he be­lieves a po­lice post would serve as a great de­ter­rent.

“I was in­formed that they putting a po­lice post near the sa­van­nah, which I think is a good thing for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to make it safer and bet­ter. This area is not no high crime area, no in­ci­dents so far, but yuh know how crime is now and yuh doesn’t know.”

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that the plan will not be a bur­den on po­lice of­fi­cers, as they will be sup­port­ed by mem­bers of the De­fence Force.

He said the plan is about in­creas­ing po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty, cou­pled with pro­vid­ing bet­ter ac­com­mo­da­tions for po­lice of­fi­cers who may not have such fa­cil­i­ties at the var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions.