Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Sev­er­al res­i­dents in Val­sayn North say they are con­cerned about the dif­fer­ent strate­gies now be­ing used by crim­i­nals to find vic­tims, amidst sev­er­al re­ports of lar­ce­nies, rob­beries and even home in­va­sions in the com­mu­ni­ty for the year thus far.

The res­i­dents ac­knowl­edge that while there has been a vis­i­ble po­lice and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence through­out their neigh­bour­hoods, they are still wary of crim­i­nals ac­cess­ing their homes.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his home last week, one life­long res­i­dent, Wayne Go­sine, said the com­mu­ni­ty has al­ways tak­en pre­cau­tions about their sur­round­ings and per­son­al safe­ty, but felt that crim­i­nals have been us­ing new­er and more in­no­v­a­tive meth­ods of en­ter­ing the com­mu­ni­ty to stage at­tacks.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the neigh­bour­hood, of­fi­cers from the SWAT pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny were seen di­rect­ing traf­fic while ran­dom­ly ques­tion­ing dri­vers en­ter­ing Prince Charles Av­enue, Val­sayn, which is off the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way.

How­ev­er, Go­sine said he sus­pect­ed that crim­i­nals were us­ing “scouts” on bi­cy­cles to evade con­ven­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty bar­ri­ers.

“The se­cu­ri­ty has helped but we are ex­posed, be­cause some­times they (ban­dits) come in with a bi­cy­cle right, and they ride around as if they’re ex­er­cis­ing, then they will do sort of like a map­ping and they fig­ure which hous­es or places are more tar­getable, once there is less move­ment ... more than like­ly that’s what’s hap­pen­ing and it’s hap­pen­ing more fre­quent now,” Go­sine said.

“Some­times they come bold and pre­tend to be a taxi dri­ver and say they’re go­ing to pick up some­body and there are pri­vate taxis and who knows, maybe the li­cence plate on the cars may not even be right.”

But Go­sine said the threat to res­i­dents may not nec­es­sar­i­ly come from the street, as he not­ed that sev­er­al peo­ple have re­port­ed crim­i­nals ac­cess­ing homes from dried parts of the St Joseph Riv­er, which tra­vers­es Val­sayn and the wider St Joseph dis­trict cross­ing sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing Bangladesh and the Mara­cas Roy­al Ro­cad.

“We are ex­posed to the back of the riv­er go­ing back to Mt Hope and the agri­cul­tur­al lands, so you’ll see peo­ple com­ing through there as well,” he said

Sim­i­lar con­cerns were raised by res­i­dents of Val­sayn Av­enue in March, when they point­ed to over­grown bush­es from aban­doned parcels of land to the east of the com­mu­ni­ty, which they sus­pect­ed were be­ing used by ban­dits as cov­er to ac­cess near­by walls in­to the home of one res­i­dent at the time.

Dur­ing the home in­va­sion, the three-year-old pet pit­bull of a fam­i­ly alert­ed rel­a­tives at the home to the strangers on the prop­er­ty, which led to the ban­dits be­ing chased away.

One of­fi­cer at­tached to the St Joseph CID, who asked not to be named, told Guardian Me­dia that of­fi­cers were al­so aware of con­cerns in­volv­ing the use of the riverbed.

The of­fi­cer ad­mit­ted that giv­en how far the riv­er ex­tend­ed, it was dif­fi­cult to ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent the en­try of crim­i­nals us­ing this route.

“It’s an easy ac­cess point for them. Peo­ple won’t usu­al­ly go down in­to the riv­er and the po­lice won’t re­al­ly go down there un­less they’re in hot pur­suit of some­one. It’s not a place they will ran­dom­ly pa­trol be­cause to fol­low that riv­er means it can take you all they way up to Mara­cas,” the of­fi­cer said.

“It would be a far walk for ban­dits, but there are dried parts of the bank they can ac­cess and over­grown bush­es of­fer con­ceal­ment to the ban­dits when they can come off at dif­fer­ent points. But the po­lice have been pay­ing at­ten­tion to these ar­eas by dri­ving past them more of­ten, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the home in­va­sions and lar­ce­nies re­port­ed ear­li­er this year.”

The of­fi­cer rec­om­mend­ed that res­i­dents in­vest in se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras with high res­o­lu­tion and au­dio ca­pa­bil­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly if their prop­er­ties were near the riverbed, to give po­lice a greater chance of find­ing and ar­rest­ing sus­pects.

In one of the more re­cent in­ci­dents on April 27, an el­der­ly woman was robbed of cash and jew­ellery at her Wind­sor Av­enue home just af­ter 6 pm.

Res­i­dents said neigh­bour­hood watch groups, pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty and po­lice were alert­ed when the ban­dits es­caped us­ing the riv­er.

Po­lice chased one of the sus­pects to Farm Road, St Joseph, where two men were found and ar­rest­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the men were even­tu­al­ly re­leased due to a lack of phys­i­cal ev­i­dence and CCTV cam­era footage.

In an­oth­er in­ci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 26, a 73-year-old woman re­turned to her Gilwell Street home and no­ticed her front doors open and her house ran­sacked.

Po­lice said TT$13,000, US$3000 and a quan­ti­ty of jew­ellery were stolen.

One source in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) said ef­forts were made to curb the is­sue of crim­i­nals us­ing the en­vi­ron­ment to their ad­van­tage by part­ner­ing with the TTPS and the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), but did not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on what these ini­tia­tives were or when they took place.

One res­i­dent who asked not to be named said while he was aware of home in­va­sions and rob­beries in some parts of the com­mu­ni­ty, he felt gen­er­al­ly safe on his street, point­ing to the pres­ence of se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras and neigh­bour­hood watch signs, which he felt were a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nals.

“I walk here all one or two o’clock in the morn­ing, some­times mid­night and it’s very safe. The on­ly thing I wor­ry about are dogs be­cause peo­ple let their dogs go in their yards and some­times, they get out in­to the road, but that’s about it,” the res­i­dent said.