Camille Clarke

Less than 24 hours af­ter the po­lice post at Dun­can Street, Port-of -Spain, opened for busi­ness, po­lice found a nine-mil­lime­tre gun at Man­go Rose.Around 10.30 am yes­ter­day, they re­ceived a re­port that shots had been fired in the area and when they ar­rived, they saw sev­er­al men with guns run­ning away. The po­lice then spot­ted the gun at the side of one of the nine-storey apart­ment build­ings.The post was for­mal­ly opened on Oc­to­ber 17, 2013 in an area of east Port-of-Spain which has been dubbed a "hot spot" and "war zone."

The $2 mil­lion post is a project of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and is manned by mem­bers of the CCTV Re­sponse Unit, the In­ter Agency Task Force and An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit.It hous­es a hold­ing bay, home­work and me­di­a­tion cen­tres and, ac­cord­ing to po­lice, "a small dor­mi­to­ry for nu­mer­ous of­fi­cers." The build­ing is sur­round­ed by sur­veil­lance cam­eras which mon­i­tor the com­pound, Dun­can Street and the sur­round­ing area.

When a T&T Guardian team vis­it­ed it, of­fi­cers said they had re­ceived 30 re­ports in their first day on Mon­day.Head of the IATF, se­nior supt Carl­ton Al­leyne and act­ing as­sis­tant supt Wayne Mo­hammed were vis­it­ing at the time.Al­leyne said the po­lice hoped res­i­dents would con­tin­ue to work with them to stop the surge of crime in the area.

"We will have me­di­a­tion and home­work cen­tres which will be used in the in­ter­est of the com­mu­ni­ty. We will be ac­quir­ing ten more com­put­ers to in­volve chil­dren in ac­tiv­i­ties and teach young peo­ple life skills," he said.Al­leyne said mem­bers of the Hearts and Minds Pro­gramme would be work­ing with the po­lice to pro­vide me­di­a­tion for res­i­dents."We are look­ing for good things and we can­not do it on our own. We have to do it to­geth­er and the Po­lice Ser­vice and res­i­dents will ben­e­fit.

"We will have dif­fer­ent me­di­a­tors to as­sist and re­fer them and be in con­stant con­ver­sa­tion with them. It is an ide­al place where it is safe for them to come," he added.

Res­i­dents: We need more posts

Jen­nifer Jones, a res­i­dent, said sev­er­al more po­lice posts were need­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty."Yes, it is a good thing. They need to open ten more for each block," she said.Bri­an St Louis, an­oth­er res­i­dent, had mixed feel­ings."It is a good ini­tia­tive," he said, but added: "The po­lice have to be more dili­gent on the job. They does be around and not around, if you know what I mean.

"Some shots will be fired and 20 min­utes lat­er (mak­ing po­lice siren nois­es). It will calm them down a lit­tle bit but they (po­lice) have to be more per­sis­tent and you won't hear no gun­shots."A res­i­dent from St Paul's Street said: "We need one up there by the Quar­ry and Ter­race. Right now is sa­tan pa­trolling."

Po­lice: New­post lack­ing

Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent In­sp Anand Rame­sar said there were is­sues that need­ed to be ad­dressed at the post.He said: "I would give them 100 marks for aes­thet­ic pre­sen­ta­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty."They did not take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the needs and wel­fare and safe­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers and is­sues, such as hav­ing the dor­mi­to­ry fa­cil­i­ties."The fire es­cape is not the best. The en­try and ex­it fa­cil­i­ties are not suit­able in a po­lice en­vi­ron­ment."

Rame­sar said a list of safe­ty is­sues sur­round­ing the struc­ture of the build­ing had been pre­sent­ed to the as­so­ci­a­tion."While the as­so­ci­a­tion un­der­stands there was some ef­fort to treat some of the is­sues, it is a clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the as­so­ci­a­tion that it has not been to the ex­tent that mem­bers feel com­fort­able, safe and their wel­fare has been a con­sid­er­a­tion in their oc­cu­pa­tion and use of that build­ing," he said.