CHARLES KONG SOO

Res­i­dents in Mt Lam­bert have linked via What­sApp with the Barataria, San Juan and St Joseph po­lice sta­tions in an ef­fort to fight crime and form al­liances with to im­prove the com­mu­ni­ty.

With sup­port from so­cial me­dia, the neigh­bours are mon­i­tor­ing the move­ments of sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters and shar­ing pho­tographs and in­for­ma­tion which are re­layed to the po­lice.

One res­i­dent re­port­ed that when a ban­dit at­tempt­ed to break in­to his home at 2 am two Sat­ur­days ago, his neigh­bour post­ed an im­age of the sus­pect on the chat group.

The res­i­dents al­so work with of­fi­cials from T&TEC to re­pair street lights, WASA of­fi­cials to re­pair leaks and the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SJL­RC) for cleanup cam­paigns, flood re­lief and in­fra­struc­ture main­te­nance and re­pairs.

The group re­cent­ly pre­sent­ed gift bas­kets to of­fi­cers at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion and the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion who have been work­ing with them to re­duce the rime in the area. Among the of­fi­cers pre­sent­ed with the to­kens of ap­pre­ci­a­tion were act­ing Sgt Cur­tis Ap­ple­white, head of the ERP Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol at the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion, In­sp David Hunte, of the CID of­fice and In­sp Naim Gyan of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

Sup­port from var­i­ous agen­cies

Pres­i­dent of Res­i­dents of Mt Lam­bert Shar­la Alexan­der-Dolabaille, a for­mer tem­po­rary sen­a­tor for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress said the What­sApp group was formed ear­ly this year af­ter a break-in at the Mt Lam­bert RC School.

“It’s non-po­lit­i­cal, de­signed to high­light crime, so­cial is­sues, in­fra­struc­ture or util­i­ties, there are rules to fol­low and an ob­jec­tive,” she ex­plained

“The dark­ness of crime has pulled neigh­bours to­geth­er and raised their aware­ness, with the help of po­lice of­fi­cers. If a strange car is pass­ing they would take the num­ber, de­scrip­tion of the ve­hi­cle, colour, make, no­ti­fy the po­lice and share on­line.

“We have street mon­i­tors for the 11 streets in Mt Lam­bert. From fruit thieves, stolen ve­hi­cles, to cars cool­ing in the area, that is no longer hap­pen­ing be­cause we have quite a num­ber of mo­bile po­lice pa­trols and we must com­mend the of­fi­cers and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.”

Alexan­der-Dolabaille said a strong net­work had been es­tab­lished, im­prov­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty. In ad­di­tion, there is now a quick­er re­sponse from pub­lic util­i­ties and oth­er agen­cies to prob­lems in the area.

She said SJL­RC per­son­nel as­sist­ed res­i­dents dur­ing re­cent flood­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty, re­mov­ing de­bris from the road, wash­ing down the church­yard and parish hall and de­silt­ed drains.

She said the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion al­so patched the Sa­van­nah Road with lim­it­ed re­sources and has pledged to con­tin­ue fur­ther work in the com­mu­ni­ty in the new Alexan­der-Dolabaille said the group al­so dis­trib­uted flood ham­pers to vic­tims, do­nat­ed 15 cas­es of wa­ter to the church har­vest, wa­ter and soft drinks to the San Juan parish, wa­ter to the se­nior cit­i­zens con­cert and made a con­tri­bu­tion to a pre-school camp.

Res­i­dents feel safer

Anne-Marie Ma­son, who lives on Sec­ond Av­enue, said be­tween 2011 to 2012 there was a spate of rob­beries in Mt Lam­bert. How­ev­er, through the com­mu­ni­ty net­work and with in­creased po­lice pa­trols crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty has been re­duced.

In­spec­tor David Hunte said of­fi­cers have done pre­sen­ta­tions on se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, pro­tect­ing homes against bur­glar­ies and home in­va­sions, per­son­al safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty at the group’s meet­ings at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion and of­fi­cers want­ed to con­tin­ue part­ner­ing with the res­i­dents to en­sure that the com­mu­ni­ty was well pro­tect­ed.

Ag Sgt Cur­tis Ap­ple­white said there has been a 34 per cent de­crease in se­ri­ous crimes in the past year.

Res­i­dents have no­ticed the dif­fer­ence. Anush­ka Pope said she sleeps bet­ter at nights know­ing res­i­dents are watch­ing out for one an­oth­er. Ruth Fraz­er-Munroe said the group is suc­cess­ful be­cause it was built on the premise of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.