Less than a week af­ter Sea Lots res­i­dents ap­pealed for pro­tec­tion against re­peat­ed at­tacks and rob­beries, the calm achieved af­ter a peace deal was bro­kered re­mains in place with­in the Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty.

Last Wednes­day, a group of Pi­o­neer Dri­ve res­i­dents walked to the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sackville Street, in the cap­i­tal city, where they met with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin and ap­pealed for help.

One day lat­er, on Thurs­day, of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion and the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), met with the res­i­dents at the Sea Lots West Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and heard their con­cerns.

At the time, the res­i­dents claimed that the com­mu­ni­ty had frag­ment­ed in­to three fac­tions, where Pi­o­neer Dri­ve res­i­dents were at­tacked by young men from Pro­duc­tion Av­enue, to the east and the Sea Lots/ Beetham High­way, fur­ther west.

How­ev­er, as part of the on­go­ing in­ter­ven­tion, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land, SC, vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty on Sun­day where he said “calm was re­stored,” fol­low­ing a meet­ing with res­i­dents.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the neigh­bour­hood yes­ter­day, res­i­dents said there had been no in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence since the mat­ter was raised pub­licly.

At Pro­duc­tion Av­enue, res­i­dents al­so as­sured that there were no at­tacks on any­one, as they al­so dis­missed claims that they were in­sti­ga­tors of the strife.

One man, who pre­ferred not to be named, de­nied that res­i­dents in his neigh­bour­hood were in­volved in the at­tack of their Pi­o­neer Dri­ve neigh­bours, blam­ing their fears on lin­ger­ing con­cerns and “bad mem­o­ries” over past acts of vi­o­lence.

“Re­mem­ber, every­body has a mouth to talk. What they have to say has noth­ing to do with us.

“We nev­er robbed any­body or beat up any­body from across there (Pi­o­neer Dri­ve).

“Every­thing is calm, it’s about who got shoot over so from how long ago, they still have that in their mind, but every­thing is okay.”

An­oth­er man said, as a tes­ta­ment to the mend­ed ties be­tween fac­tions, he along with oth­er Pro­duc­tion Av­enue res­i­dents at­tend­ed a par­ty in Pi­o­neer Dri­ve as a show of good faith over the new peace.

“Just last night we went across there. The same three sides came to­geth­er and had a par­ty last night, so every­thing co­pacetic. We al­ready come back as one.”

How­ev­er, not all res­i­dents were con­vinced that the peace would be per­ma­nent as they con­tin­ued to avoid cross­ing the bound­aries be­tween Pi­o­neer Dri­ve and Pro­duc­tion Av­enue while keep­ing to them­selves.

Life­long Sea Lots res­i­dent, Ber­nice John, said she hoped the con­tin­ued po­lice pres­ence would be enough to main­tain the peace.

Re­call­ing past claims of calm be­tween hos­tile fac­tions, John, 70, said such treaties typ­i­cal­ly did not last very long.

“I don’t feel this war go done, be­cause the last time they had peace and it went back the same way.

“I liv­ing down here since I was born, make all my chil­dren, my grand­chil­dren, all my great-grand­chil­dren liv­ing here. It will cool down for a while and it will es­ca­late again.”

While in the neigh­bour­hood, sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers were seen pa­trolling in marked ve­hi­cles through the nar­row streets which con­nect­ed the com­mu­ni­ty, as of­fi­cers kept a close eye on any ac­tiv­i­ties.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said the sight of the po­lice was com­fort­ing. The res­i­dent hoped that the vis­its from the au­thor­i­ties would soothe any sim­mer­ing ten­sions, not­ing that res­i­dents in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties were rel­a­tives.

“Both sides of Sea Lots and down the high­way come like fam­i­ly. It’s fam­i­ly all over, so we don’t need no war. We just need peace.”