If a strange ve­hi­cle is spot­ted in the neigh­bour­hood of Beetham Gar­dens any time of day, res­i­dents would be on max­i­mum alert for the very re­al threat of gun­men do­ing a dri­ve-by shoot­ing.

There is al­ways a pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­com­ing col­lat­er­al dam­age if caught in the cross­fire of gang war­fare as Beetham has been la­belled one of the 31 hot spots in T&T by the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Res­i­dents of the area have grown ac­cus­tomed to gun­shots ring­ing out in the area day or night, con­stant po­lice raids in the com­mu­ni­ty and be­ing stig­ma­tised and mar­gin­alised when seek­ing em­ploy­ment.

The ma­jor­i­ty of res­i­dents who are not in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty have found them­selves in the cross-hairs of gang vi­o­lence and it has be­come a dai­ly strug­gle to sur­vive and live a nor­mal life.

The gang vi­o­lence, some claimed, de­creased over the last few years in Beetham Gar­dens main­ly be­cause most of the gang­sters left the area and set­tled in oth­er ar­eas in the coun­try in an at­tempt to stay alive. How­ev­er, the area still re­mains a hot spot.

“Some who are in hid­ing move out ei­ther to Cen­tral or South and they do­ing their thing from there, liv­ing their lives…some of them change to be­ing able to get good jobs and to learn a trade or two,” a res­i­dent claimed.

Those who have stayed to make their liv­ing re­main with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the area, not even go­ing down­town Port-of-Spain for fear of be­ing gunned down.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia un­der anonymi­ty, a res­i­dent who has been liv­ing there for the past 45 years said the dy­nam­ics of gang ac­tiv­i­ties and re­la­tions have changed over the years. He said many of the “old­er heads” or gang­sters were killed ei­ther by the po­lice or by mem­bers of ri­val gangs from the hills of Laven­tille.

“The old­er ones used to keep a kind of or­der among the youths. Now they are dead and gone and some of them re­sort to what we call pet­ti­ness boy…they rob­bing peo­ple on the high­way. The young ones go­ing in town to snatch and some of them sud­den­ly get trig­ger hap­py be­cause it don’t have the old heads around...” the res­i­dent said.

Some res­i­dents claimed vic­tim­i­sa­tion by the po­lice, a case of every­one be­ing tar­get­ed be­cause of a few bad eggs.

“Just re­cent­ly re­al van loads of po­lice come in here...Al­most every day the po­lice com­ing in here and jack­ing up the boys and point­ing guns at them. The boys fed up. That is not the way to deal with us in­side here,” a res­i­dent said.

The res­i­dent said that there needs to be a “se­ri­ous in­ter­ven­tion” by the Gov­ern­ment to help the youths with em­ploy­ment.

“The Gov­ern­ment needs to have a per­ma­nent pro­gramme for the up­lift­ment of the youths…not to start some­thing and then stop it with­out a rea­son. We need to feel loved and cared for and that our lives do mat­ter. Maybe that could be the start of a turn­around.”

UWI law stu­dent Ka­reem Mar­celle said Beetham res­i­dents had to face a line of ques­tion­ing dur­ing job in­ter­views that moved from their skills and as­sets to if they were re­lat­ed to a gang mem­ber or cer­tain peo­ple.

He said the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in the area were con­tribut­ing to the dis­crim­i­na­tion with the rob­beries, mur­ders, and crime which they con­tin­ue to com­mit.

Mar­celle re­lat­ed how a girl in a men­tor­ship pro­gramme told him she want­ed to be a news an­chor, but could not re­alise her dreams be­cause some mem­bers of her fam­i­ly were in­volved in crime.

He said he mo­ti­vat­ed the girl telling her about his fa­ther who had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in the US and was sen­tenced to 35 years to life in prison and it hadn’t stopped him from be­ing an ac­tivist and lawyer.

Mar­celle said com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers were tired of knock­ing on so many doors, they re­turned home and be­came en­tre­pre­neurs.

A re­silient, re­source­ful peo­ple

The ma­jor­i­ty of res­i­dents are a re­silient and re­source­ful lot, how­ev­er, and have come up with in­no­v­a­tive ways to sur­vive and be­come self suf­fi­cient, some be­com­ing en­tre­pre­neurs.

When the Sun­day Guardian went to the area on Wednes­day, NALIS em­ploy­ees were erect­ing signs in the morn­ing for Fri­day’s open­ing of its li­brary at the Beetham Gar­dens Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre which was be­ing spruced up by work­ers.

Wendy James, from Phase 2, a brush­cut­ter op­er­a­tor with CEPEP was paint­ing the walls at the cen­tre and putting up cur­tains af­ter.

“If it wasn’t for CEPEP, I don’t know how I would make out,” she said. “I do pj work when I get it like paint­ing for Christ­mas.”

The neigh­bour­hood pie man, Mike, who is lo­cat­ed at Phase 4 has di­ver­si­fied and is sell­ing fruits af­ter his pies are sold out dur­ing the day. His stall is lit up for night sales.

The dou­bles men Car­li and his as­sis­tant “Bar­ra Ku­da” weren’t there, but Car­li’s part­ner, Tri­cia, who made the dou­bles, was in charge of the stall that evening.

She said she had al­so ex­pand­ed the range and was now sell­ing chick­en, beef and goat dou­bles.

Ayesha Warn­er and her hus­band, Michael, have been op­er­at­ing a burg­er and hot dog cart at the cor­ner of “Tem­po Street” for four years.

“We’re do­ing good,” she said. “It’s re­al­ly for the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty. I make every­thing from scratch, the beef, chick­en pat­ties, and fish burg­ers.

“Any­thing you bring out to sell will sell be­cause we get a lot of sup­port from res­i­dents and the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Ma­li­ka Nedd, in her late 20s, from Phase 5, learned her hair­dress­ing craft from the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre and set up her busi­ness Hair By Ma­li­ka op­po­site the cen­tre. She said her clients come from Cen­tral and be­yond.

She said it was very dif­fi­cult for young peo­ple to get jobs, even to get in schools be­cause of the stig­ma and it was ben­e­fi­cial to learn skills.

“Fruits Man”, 21, from Phase 1, said he has two chil­dren and school fees to pay.

He said he opened just over a month and did bar­be­cue on Fri­days and Sat­ur­days where he gets the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­act with the youths and el­ders who pa­tro­n­ise his busi­ness.

Fruits man said it was a good way to stay out of trou­ble. He al­so ex­pressed con­cern that res­i­dents had to write a false ad­dress in or­der to bet­ter their chances of se­cur­ing a job.

He said peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly had to come in the Beetham them­selves to see “the re­al love there”.

Is­rael Wil­son, 21, from Phase 3, a grad­u­ate from the MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy elec­tri­cal lev­el 2 wants to be an elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer.

He said he wants to go to ATC (Au­toma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Col­lege) in Curepe to pur­sue lev­el 3 but needs to raise $15,000 to pur­sue his ca­reer and wants to achieve his goals be­fore 23. In the mean­while, he in­stalls air-con­di­tion units for peo­ple in the area to make ex­tra mon­ey to fund his ed­u­ca­tion.

Cops use holis­tic ap­proach to fight­ing gangs and crime

In­sp Ian Charles, from the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and the Hearts and Minds Foun­da­tion, said that it was a holis­tic ap­proach in­volv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty, em­brac­ing chil­dren and el­ders and in­clud­ed in­ter­ac­tion with the sur­round­ing schools to com­bat gangs and crime.

He said the IATF Po­lice Youth Club’s net­ball team was do­ing well in com­pe­ti­tions and it had in­ten­tions to start foot­ball but the field was un­der con­struc­tion.

Charles, who was not a res­i­dent, but worked in the area for 25 years and spent most of his ser­vice in the Port-of-Spain CID, said with the open­ing of the li­brary, they had in­ten­tions of re­vamp­ing the home­work cen­tre to try and in­flu­ence chil­dren to re­turn.

He said he had seen sev­er­al peo­ple in the area start up their own small busi­ness­es as they gained con­fi­dence and went out on their own.

Charles said peo­ple came from all over Trinidad to at­tend cours­es at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre such as hair­dress­ing, cook­ing, and roti mak­ing and not one of them had been ha­rassed or robbed.

Coun­cil­lor: There’s no overnight fix

San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Coun­cil­lor Adan­na Grif­fith-Gor­don who rep­re­sents Phase 4 and 5 said to steer the na­tion’s youths away from gangs was no easy task.

She said gangs were at­trac­tive­ly pack­aged for youths who lived by the pop­u­lar phrase “get rich or die tryin”.

Grif­fith-Gor­don said there were many pro­grammes that the youths can get in­volved in.

She said, how­ev­er, the pack­ag­ing of these pro­grammes were not speak­ing to those who chose to en­ter gangs. Grif­fith-Gor­don said stake­hold­ers may have to look at re­brand­ing some of these pro­grammes so that they be­come more at­trac­tive than a gang.

She said en­force­ment of the law was al­so re­quired in or­der to steer youths away from gangs.

Grif­fith-Gor­don said it was the law that a child must at­tend school, how­ev­er, there were chil­dren as ear­ly as pri­ma­ry school lev­el who did not at­tend school reg­u­lar­ly or in some cas­es not at all. She was of the opin­ion that not enough par­ents were be­ing held ac­count­able for this.

She said as a na­tion every­one must get in­volved, there was no overnight fix.

Grif­fith-Gor­don said it was easy for peo­ple to sit on the out­side of com­mu­ni­ties that had been brand­ed neg­a­tive­ly and add their two cents, how­ev­er, who felt it, knew it.

She called on the peo­ple to come to­geth­er and feed pos­i­tiv­i­ty and light where there is dark­ness and neg­a­tiv­i­ty.