Ak­ile Si­mon

A Po­lice Con­sta­ble and his fam­i­ly now fear for their lives af­ter a gun­man fired a vol­ley of shots at the law­man when gang vi­o­lence erupt­ed on Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain, on New Year's Day. That in­ci­dent left one man, Va­roon La­keer­am, 19, dead. Kadeem Trot­man, nine, was al­so grazed in the head by a bul­let dur­ing the shoot­ing. Three Dun­can Street men were al­so shot and wound­ed as a gang from the area en­gaged in sev­er­al shoot-outs with their ri­vals at Nel­son Street. Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, a rel­a­tive of the of­fi­cer, who did not wish to be iden­ti­fied, said the in­ci­dent has left fam­i­ly mem­bers se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised.

"We have to re­main locked-up in­side all day long, even though they (gang mem­bers) could break down the door and still get at us. "Its a war go­ing on up in­side here and we are caught up in it," the man said. He said, the fam­i­ly ap­plied to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) a few years ago to be re­lo­cat­ed from Nel­son Street, but noth­ing pos­i­tive has ma­te­ri­alised. "As a po­lice of­fi­cer, he be­come a tar­get, and, you know how crim­i­nals think nowa­days, 'no wit­ness, no case.' "So, what­ev­er as­sis­tance is of­fered for us to get out of here, we wel­come it," the man said.

As­so­ci­a­tion re­sponds

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, Em­rol Bruce, said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was will­ing to lend what­ev­er as­sis­tance to the of­fi­cer and his fam­i­ly. Bruce said he spoke with the of­fi­cer via tele­phone yes­ter­day, and promised to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion on Romero's be­half. He was al­so crit­i­cal of the treat­ment po­lice of­fi­cers re­ceived from the HDC. Bruce said, "The HDC is play­ing games with us. They are not pre­pared to as­sist the po­lice in any way, even though the lives of some of­fi­cers are in im­mi­nent dan­ger, be­cause of where they live. "The Po­lice Ser­vice has not been hav­ing much suc­cess with the HDC and we find it ap­palling the way they treat the po­lice," he said.

Things cool

Mean­while, a lev­el of nor­mal­cy has re­turned to Nel­son and Dun­can Streets, Port-of-Spain, where the gang vi­o­lence had erupt­ed. There were po­lice of­fi­cers from the In­ter Agency Task Force con­duct­ing foot and ve­hic­u­lar pa­trols. The po­lice pres­ence was in­creased af­ter the re­cent spate of shoot­ings. Oth­er ar­eas with­in the Besson Street Po­lice dis­trict such as Laven­tille, Beetham and Sea Lots were al­so rel­a­tive­ly qui­et yes­ter­day. As the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the ar­eas, sev­er­al po­lice ve­hi­cles were seen on pa­trol with of­fi­cers in­ter­act­ing with res­i­dents. A 25-year-old sus­pect, who was point­ed out as the at­tack­er, re­mains in po­lice cus­tody. He was held along with four oth­er men from Dun­can Street, af­ter La­keer­am's killing.

Of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion stand out­side the apart­ment on Nel­son Street where the coun­try's first mur­der for 2010 was record­ed on Fri­day. In that in­ci­dent, Va­roon La­keer­am, 19, was shot by two gun­men, while stand­ing out­side his apart­ment. PHO­TO: Mar­cus Gon­za­les