Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior po­lice, in­clud­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, have con­firmed that the TTPS is pre­pared to tack­le any resur­gence in gang vi­o­lence in and around east Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty are not re­as­sured by this, as they re­main in­doors out of fear of con­tin­ued blood­shed.

On Thurs­day morn­ing, 33-year-old Dwayne Si­mon was shot and killed dur­ing an at­tack at the Man­go Rose Hous­ing Com­plex in east Port-of-Spain.

Si­mon was re­port­ed­ly chased by his at­tack­ers up a flight of stairs at the build­ing be­fore they even­tu­al­ly caught up with him, killing him. Two oth­er men, in­clud­ing Si­mon’s un­cle, were wound­ed in the at­tack.

Si­mon is the third man to be killed in east Port-of-Spain for the year thus far.

On Jan­u­ary 1, Ricky Tay­lor was shot and killed out­side his busi­ness place near the cor­ner of George and Prince Streets.

Weeks lat­er, on Feb­ru­ary 1, Hakim “Da­da Sixx” O’Brien was gunned down near the Dun­can Street Po­lice Post.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said the re­lease of pur­port­ed gang mem­bers af­ter the lift­ing of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) would not be a chal­lenge, as he was con­fi­dent in the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to sub­due any gang vi­o­lence.

He not­ed that dur­ing the SoE, po­lice gath­ered in­tel­li­gence which would guide such in­ves­ti­ga­tions, al­low­ing them to take di­rect ac­tion against crim­i­nal net­works.

“I don’t want to speak too much on the strate­gies that we would be util­is­ing, but just know that we are pre­pared to re­spond to any up­surge in gang vi­o­lence or any hotspot area of vi­o­lence that may oc­cur,” he said.

Com­ment­ing on the fact that a quan­ti­ty of spent 5.56 shells were found at the scene of Si­mon’s mur­der on Thurs­day, Gue­var­ro said such high-cal­i­bre rounds could cause “ir­re­pairable” dam­age and ap­pealed to the pub­lic to do their part in re­port­ing any in­for­ma­tion they had on the lo­ca­tion of these weapons or their own­ers.

“When you see peo­ple with these il­le­gal weapons, kind­ly re­port it to the po­lice; there are var­i­ous av­enues 999, 555. Crime Stop­pers. We are will­ing to work with you all to keep the streets safer.”

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) in charge of area North-West (the West­ern and Port of Spain Di­vi­sions), Garvin Hen­ry, said there has been height­ened po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties in east Port-of-Spain as part of ef­forts to quell any fur­ther re­tal­i­a­tion.

Hen­ry said he was mind­ful of the con­cerns res­i­dents had over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of more mur­ders, but as­sured crime-fight­ing strate­gies were still un­der­way.

“So, we are work­ing on leads and we are aware that there could be re­tal­ia­to­ry ac­tion but we are pre­pared to deal with it be­cause we have height­ened our pres­ence and op­er­a­tions in that par­tic­u­lar area with that (re­tal­i­a­tion) in mind.”

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia re­turned to the Man­go Rose Hous­ing Com­plex, there was lit­tle ac­tiv­i­ty, as few res­i­dents seen out­side the build­ing.

One res­i­dent who ven­tured out­side to throw away garbage said many peo­ple were afraid to ven­ture out­side af­ter Thurs­day’s killing.

The man, who asked not to be named, said he was al­so out­side at the time of the shoot­ing, not­ing he nar­row­ly es­caped the gun­men when he changed his mind at the last minute about buy­ing a cig­a­rette from one of the men who was shot.

“I was right here when I was talk­ing to one of them (the men) and I walked around the cor­ner to fin­ish some work in front. If I stayed here and bought that cig­a­rette from that man, I would have end­ed up laid out on the ground with the rest of them. I sure about that.”

Point­ing to sev­er­al large bul­let holes seen on the wall of Build­ing 33-43, where Si­mon and oth­ers were shot, the res­i­dent said the res­i­dents were un­easy fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, not­ing that the en­tire build­ing was un­usu­al­ly qui­et for a Fri­day.

Com­ment­ing on the fact that the gun­men ar­rived and es­caped in a sil­ver Nis­san X-Trail, the man said such at­tacks hap­pened with­out warn­ing, which made res­i­dents para­noid about un­fa­mil­iar ve­hi­cles in the neigh­bour­hood.

He al­so not­ed that he was not con­vinced the pres­ence of po­lice in the area would pro­vide any long-term re­lief to res­i­dents.

“They may come here for about a day or two and then go back about their busi­ness. Then the next time we may see them is when they come back to pick up an­oth­er body.”