An­na-Lisa Paul

There is no fric­tion be­tween po­lice and sol­diers, who con­tin­ue to car­ry out joint pa­trols in the hills of Laven­tille, Sgt Wayne Mys­tar said on Wednes­day.Speak­ing dur­ing Wednes­day's week­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Mys­tar said the two arms of law en­force­ment were work­ing in tan­dem to pre­serve the peace in the trou­bled com­mu­ni­ty.

The ini­tia­tive, which was in­tro­duced at the be­gin­ning of March to stem the wave of mur­ders oc­cur­ring dai­ly, was suc­cess­ful in bring­ing an im­me­di­ate stop to the killings, he said.Af­ter al­most three weeks with­out a mur­der, how­ev­er, two men were gunned down in un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dents on April 16 at Cale­do­nia and Soogren Trace, Laven­tille.Mys­tar said the re­cent mur­ders had now forced se­nior of­fi­cials to re­view their op­er­a­tions in the area.

Asked about the re-emerg­ing vi­o­lence, Mys­tar ad­mit­ted, "We are ob­serv­ing a pat­tern."Pressed to say if the crim­i­nals had ob­served the joint pa­trols' op­er­a­tions and were now work­ing around them, Mys­tar said, "At times, the sit­u­a­tion is one where you will not get any vi­o­lent crime oc­cur­ring in the area where joint op­er­a­tions are tak­ing place, and times when you are go­ing to get a spike.

"The joint army and po­lice pa­trols are re-strate­gis­ing and putting mech­a­nisms in place to keep hot-spot ar­eas at a man­age­able state and we are us­ing all avail­able re­sources."Asked about the grue­some mur­ders that are oc­cur­ring around the coun­try, Mys­tar ap­pealed to the pub­lic for help.

"Based on in­for­ma­tion-gath­er­ing, we have got­ten feed­back that as­sist­ed us in deal­ing with some of these in­ci­dents. How­ev­er, we are ask­ing the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to part­ner with us. We just need the in­for­ma­tion and our teams will pass it on to the nec­es­sary agen­cies," he said.