Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

More than a month af­ter a string of break-ins in­to parked cars and rob­beries trig­gered a mul­ti-pronged po­lice re­sponse near the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road, St Clair, po­lice and jog­gers have re­port­ed that there has been a no­tice­able de­cline in crime in the area.

But while vis­i­tors to the area say po­lice have been con­duct­ing more reg­u­lar pa­trols, they are al­so mind­ful of dogs in the area.

How­ev­er, while the au­thor­i­ties have been cred­it­ed with a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of re­port­ed lar­ce­nies and break-ins of parked ve­hi­cles, fre­quent users of the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill main­tain they con­tin­ue to ex­er­cise cau­tion while in the area.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions through the TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit via What­sApp on Fri­day, head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom, said de­spite the de­cline in re­port­ed crimes, var­i­ous units of the po­lice op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the area have been in­ten­si­fied.

“The re­duc­tion in re­port­ed in­ci­dents can be at­trib­uted, in part, to a co­or­di­nat­ed in­ter-agency ini­tia­tive launched last month. This op­er­a­tion in­volved the TTPS Port-of- Spain Di­vi­sion, Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice and the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), sup­port­ed by drone sur­veil­lance.

“This in­te­grat­ed ap­proach fa­cil­i­tates re­al-time in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing and en­ables more pre­cise and tar­get­ed de­ploy­ments,” he said.

On March 19, an Ari­ma man parked his white Toy­ota Hilux near the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo and left to ex­er­cise.

He re­turned lat­er and found that the left rear win­dow of the ve­hi­cle was bro­ken and his lap­top, cell­phone, ear­bud charg­ing port, head­phones, lunch bag and as­sort­ed cloth­ing were miss­ing.

On March 15, an­oth­er rob­bery was re­port­ed, where a woman’s sil­ver Mer­cedes-Benz was bro­ken in­to and a glass­es case stolen.

On the morn­ing of March 1, a man’s Toy­ota Rav4 was bro­ken in­to at the foot of the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill, near the Hor­ti­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety. A black pouch con­tain­ing his house­keep­ing, bank cards and $1,000 in cash were stolen.

In an­oth­er in­ci­dent on the night of Feb­ru­ary 2, a woman parked and locked her Toy­ota Aqua on the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and left to ex­er­cise. She re­turned short­ly af­ter and no­ticed the back glass of the car bro­ken and the car bat­tery miss­ing.

Po­lice have in the past urged the own­ers of Toy­ota Aquas to in­stall se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems and bet­ter se­cure their hy­brid bat­ter­ies with clamps or bolts to pre­vent thefts, as they no­ticed that such bat­ter­ies were “pre­ferred” by crim­i­nals for their re­sale val­ue.

Thom, in his re­sponse, al­so not­ed that pa­trols were main­tained dur­ing peak ac­tiv­i­ty hours, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­tween 4 am-7 am and 4 pm-7 pm, with drones de­ployed to mon­i­tor park­ing ar­eas and iden­ti­fied “blind spots” along the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill and the perime­ter of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

“These as­sets serve both as a vis­i­ble de­ter­rent and a tool for rapid re­sponse.”

Vis­i­tors still cau­tious, vig­i­lant

At the en­trance to the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road at the cor­ner of Bri­an Lara Dri­ve, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed, a large, weath­ered sign urg­ing vis­i­tors to avoid leav­ing valu­ables in their ve­hi­cles was vis­i­ble, as sev­er­al ve­hi­cles were seen parked at the side of the road.

Two marked po­lice ve­hi­cles were al­so seen on pa­trol less than one hour apart.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, one jog­ger, who asked not to be named, ad­mit­ted that her ve­hi­cle was bro­ken in­to in late Jan­u­ary af­ter she had parked along Bri­an Lara Dri­ve, prompt­ing her to change her rou­tine.

She, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that ex­pe­ri­enc­ing crime it­self was a “wake-up” call for many peo­ple to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions.

“My so­lu­tion was I no longer park on the stretch, some­where I feel my ve­hi­cle is more safe, so I walk to Chan­cel­lor, I walk the route and I walk back to my ve­hi­cle... sim­ple as that,” she said.

“I can­not say that many have heed­ed the cau­tions. I will say there have been a few peo­ple I see reg­u­lar­ly... I don’t see them parked here as of­ten. I think it’s some­thing you need to ex­pe­ri­ence for your­self to re­al­ly take heed of the ad­vice.”

She said de­spite the ex­pe­ri­ence, she did not feel un­safe, es­pe­cial­ly due to the height­ened po­lice pres­ence.

An­oth­er vis­i­tor, Shel­don Lee Wing, said he and his rel­a­tives vis­it­ed La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road as of­ten as pos­si­ble to ex­er­cise.

“I don’t feel un­safe at all, we come here all 4 o’clock, six o’clock, 9 o’clock in the night. I can on­ly ad­vise peo­ple to try not to walk around with a sense of fear, but be alert, al­ways be on your guard, look around and un­der­stand your sur­round­ings,” Lee Wing said.

An­oth­er jog­ger, Karim Thomas, al­so ad­vised fel­low vis­i­tors to be mind­ful of their sur­round­ings, as he re­ferred to in­stances where he saw “care­less” peo­ple in­ad­ver­tent­ly show­ing off valu­ables be­fore leav­ing their parked cars.

“You’re tak­ing things out of the car just to put them in the back­seat or the dash­board, so you just showed off every­thing you have,” Thomas said.

“The po­lice pres­ence isn’t an is­sue be­cause it have po­lice here all the time and I re­alised they fixed the lights too, be­cause here used to be very dark. It’s about peo­ple be­ing aware of their sur­round­ings and what they’re do­ing.”

Ban­dits not the

on­ly con­cern

While on the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill, one jog­ger who asked not to be named said she was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned over re­ports that a jog­ger was mauled by a pit bull in the area in April, not­ing that she walked with a group in a bid to de­ter fur­ther at­tacks.

“It’s not just pit bulls too, I know peo­ple who com­plained about stray dogs ‘rush­ing’ peo­ple along this stretch. That’s why I walk as part of a larg­er group for more safe­ty that way.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty of An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) chair Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la said the pit bulls in­volved in at­tacks in April left the prop­er­ty of their own­er in Boissiere, Mar­aval, and sug­gest­ed they may have reached the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill along the hill­side, where they at­tacked jog­gers on three sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions be­tween March and April.

Ku­ruvil­la con­firmed her or­gan­i­sa­tion was con­tact­ed by the TTPS to as­sist in catch­ing the dogs, which were round­ed up and kept at the so­ci­ety’s Christo­pher Samuel Dri­ve head­quar­ters.

The dog’s own­er, she said, re­turned to claim the dogs.

“I don’t know whether the po­lice fol­lowed up and spoke with the own­ers and we felt... it seemed clear that the own­ers were un­able to con­fine the dogs. So, where we are at the mo­ment is there are in­ci­dents oc­cur­ring, not nec­es­sar­i­ly in (La­dy) Chan­cel­lor but dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try, where you have a sit­u­a­tion of stray or roam­ing dogs and dog at­tacks and there’s re­al­ly noth­ing in place to con­trol it.

“The TTSP­CA has no le­gal au­thor­i­ty, so all we can do is try and as­sist where we can but the sit­u­a­tion is re­al­ly not con­trolled in any way and peo­ple do com­plain about be­ing ha­rassed by packs of dogs or peo­ple’s dogs and so on and where an own­er can be iden­ti­fied, we try to con­tact the own­er, write them for­mal­ly and ad­vise them that it’s an of­fence and there are penal­ties, but that’s as far as we can go with that sit­u­a­tion.”

Re­fer­ring to the Dog Con­trol Act, Ku­ruvil­la said there were stip­u­la­tions in­tro­duced for the own­ers of cer­tain breeds of dogs, in­clud­ing pit bulls, but ques­tioned what en­force­ment was be­ing done to en­sure such stan­dards were be­ing ad­hered to.

“There’s no in­spec­tion and so on, if we have pit bulls com­ing in­to our sys­tem and we do get them giv­en up to us in our shel­ter—we don’t adopt out very high­ly ag­gres­sive dogs—but we en­sure that they’re go­ing to a prop­er­ty that is ful­ly se­cure and meets the re­quire­ment in the leg­is­la­tion, but be­cause the leg­is­la­tion... there’s no ac­tion on it peo­ple have start­ed with breed­ing so maybe you’ll see more of those dogs around.”

Ku­ruvil­la urged the own­ers of pit bulls and oth­er large dog breeds to prop­er­ly se­cure their pets while walk­ing them and to pay close at­ten­tion while ex­er­cis­ing with their an­i­mals to en­sure their safe­ty and the safe­ty of oth­ers in the im­me­di­ate area.

She not­ed that apart from pit bull at­tacks re­port­ed months ear­li­er, there has been a trend of peo­ple dri­ving to the top of La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill to aban­don un­want­ed dogs.

“We’ve had many cas­es where peo­ple seem to dri­ve up to the end of Chan­cel­lor and aban­don dogs there, so there’s the prob­lem there and of­ten we pick up the dogs, the neigh­bours... the peo­ple who live in the area res­cue the dogs, so I don’t think gen­er­al­ly there’s a lot of prob­lems with those dogs ha­rass­ing peo­ple.

“We gen­er­al­ly have a prob­lem of a lot of stray or roam­ing dogs and some­times they be­long to peo­ple... it’s a prob­lem of un­con­trolled roam­ing dogs that is not cur­rent­ly be­ing dealt with at all.”