Ryan Ba­choo

Pres­i­dent of the Postal Work­ers Union, Shel­lon Trim, says his union sup­ports the cir­cu­la­tion that ad­vis­es postal work­ers they should not use sym­bols, signs, colours and num­bers in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties to avoid be­com­ing tar­gets where gang threats are present.

A mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed May 16th from the T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia ad­vis­es de­liv­ery of­fi­cers not to wear or car­ry any item, cloth­ing, shoes, caps, hand­bags, um­brel­las, or any oth­er para­pher­na­lia while out on de­liv­ery bear­ing the num­bers, five, six, sev­en, eight and nine, as these num­bers rep­re­sent ri­val and war­ring gangs.

Trim says one of the de­liv­ery of­fi­cers had an um­brel­la with a num­ber six on it and she was stopped and told she risked get­ting shot up­on en­ter­ing one of the com­mu­ni­ties.

He says giv­en the crime sit­u­a­tion; they can no longer ig­nore what is hap­pen­ing in some of the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.

Dis­cus­sions have start­ed about al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments to serve com­mu­ni­ties that are a threat, in­clud­ing post box­es where per­sons can pick up their mail or us­ing per­sons from the com­mu­ni­ty as the de­liv­er of­fi­cers them­selves.

Guardian Me­dia has reached out to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for com­ment on this mat­ter as well as Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­za­les.