Yvonne Ba­boolal

The en­e­my lines are drawn.Po­lice say they have de­clared war with protest­ing res­i­dents of Laven­tille."As far as we are con­cerned, this is an all-out war. There is noth­ing to ne­go­ti­ate," an an­gry Head of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, In­spec­tor Roger Alexan­der, told the Guardian yes­ter­day.Us­ing words like "en­e­my" to re­fer to the res­i­dents, he said po­lice of­fi­cers were shot at four times dur­ing pa­trols in dif­fer­ent parts of Laven­tille yes­ter­day, a ma­jor crime hot spot.

"Thank­ful­ly, no-one was in­jured but whole day they kept call­ing for back up."Alexan­der said it was a state­ment by a res­i­dent to the me­dia that caused the po­lice to view the sit­u­a­tion as a war."He said on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion that the po­lice have to sign off their firearms when they leave for home, mean­ing they don't have to do that."I take that as a de­lib­er­ate threat."

Alexan­der said po­lice op­er­a­tions in the area have been in­ten­si­fied with a cal­i­brat­ed ef­fort by of­fi­cers from the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the CCTV Unit, the North East­ern Di­vi­sion and the De­fence Force."I wouldn't call it a lock­down but we have stepped up op­er­a­tions."He said the po­lice were in­formed that res­i­dents are plan­ning ma­jor protest ac­tion to­day. They have been burn­ing de­bris and en­gag­ing in protest ac­tion since the shoot­ing of 19-year old Keshorn Daniel from the area.

Alexan­der said two peo­ple from the St Paul Street area were shot and killed by gang mem­bers yes­ter­day but res­i­dents did not say a word."They came down from the top of the hill and killed two peo­ple on the road. But no­body heard or saw this."Asked if the killings were gang-re­lat­ed, he said, "Most sit­u­a­tions are more or less gang-re­lat­ed."

Alexan­der said he planned to ask act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams this morn­ing to sus­pend the Hearts and Minds project the IATF has been en­gaged in with at-risk youth in Laven­tille.The unit comes un­der the IATF, which has spear­head­ed an ef­fort to teach the youths of St Barb's, one of the more volatile ar­eas in Laven­tille, math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish, com­put­er lit­er­a­cy and oth­er sub­jects. "You can't go to peo­ple hold­ing out your hand and they are shoot­ing at it," Alexan­der said.

He crit­i­cised com­men­ta­tors who he said sit in their ivory tow­ers and talk about po­lice in­jus­tice with­out ful­ly un­der­stand­ing what was hap­pen­ing on the ground.Alexan­der said he asked of­fi­cers to use their cell phones to get crim­i­nals shoot­ing at the po­lice on video.He al­so chal­lenged de­trac­tors of the po­lice to change their res­i­dences and go and live in Laven­tille.