A call has been made by Wood­brook res­i­dents and ho­tel op­er­a­tors for sus­tained foot pa­trols in the area, af­ter re­cent rob­beries.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent on Mon­day, Guardian re­porter Gail Alexan­der, re­turn­ing home from work, was robbed around 7.44 pm op­po­site Gov­ern­ment's Ser­vice Com­mis­sion com­plex in Wood­brook. The rob­bers were two small-boned youths of African de­scent ap­prox­i­mate­ly five feet, five inch­es and five feet, six inch­es in height. The youths were in their teens to ear­ly 20s, un­masked. One was dressed in a white T-shirt and dark-coloured hood and the oth­er in a long-sleeved jer­sey and match­ing dark-coloured pants. One wore a cap. One had a slight­ly high-pitched voice.

The youths fled in full view of se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras at Warn­er Street. Sev­er­al long-stand­ing res­i­dents of Wood­brook yes­ter­day called for a stronger po­lice pres­ence aimed at de­ter­ring crim­i­nals. They said the area was in­fil­trat­ed by peo­ple tak­ing ad­van­tage of in­creas­ing com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty. A re­tired State-agency work­er said: "Af­ter re­cent rob­beries, foot pa­trols were in­sti­tut­ed, but they're not seen much in the day or night." The sit­u­a­tion al­so threat­ens busi­ness tourism in the area, a sec­tor which the Gov­ern­ment has been pro­mot­ing.

Cordell Cole, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Wood­brook's La Ca­lyp­so Guest House, said po­lice need to "step up" to the area's chal­lenge. "We've no­ticed a se­ri­ous de­cline with lot of our reg­u­lar guests, both re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al due to the crime sit­u­a­tion," Cole said. "Many have ex­pressed con­cerns and they're ful­ly aware of the crime is­sue in T&T. So it would be re­as­sur­ing to see po­lice pa­trols reg­u­lar­ly in the area par­tic­u­lar­ly since we're just a cou­ple blocks from the sta­tion."