Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Amidst the warmth of its peo­ple, the hus­tle and bus­tle of its town cen­tre and bur­geon­ing com­mer­cial spaces lies a deep fear of crime that for even the most pa­tri­ot­ic of burgess­es is cause for deep con­cern about the fu­ture of the Roy­al Char­tered Bor­ough of Ari­ma.

As he sat with his com­pan­ions near the bus ter­mi­nal, Mal­abar res­i­dent Wil­fred Wat­son com­plained that fam­i­ly cul­ture gives way to fear when the sun sets.

“Es­pe­cial­ly for the pen­sion­ers and them, at night it dan­ger­ous and even when the old peo­ple com­ing out of the bank dur­ing the day, they are get­ting robbed,” he said.

His com­pan­ion Em­manuel St Louis chimed in at sev­er­al points, re­mind­ing Wat­son to talk about the purse and jew­ellery snatch­ings he claimed are ram­pant in the shop­ping area.

Hear­ing a fel­low “Arim­i­an” talk­ing about crime at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of sev­er­al passers-by, in­clud­ing Mal­abar Phase 3 res­i­dent To­ta Ram­cha­ran who point­ed out: “Re­mem­ber we are num­ber 1 for crime.”

Ram­cha­ran was re­fer­ring to for­mer Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob’s state­ment one year ago that the dis­trict topped the coun­try for se­ri­ous crimes such as mur­ders, shoot­ings, wound­ings and rob­beries.

Near the icon­ic Ari­ma Di­al, said crime is chas­ing away busi­ness.

“Ari­ma is a nice place man, it has a uni­ty, but the crime is es­ca­lat­ing. Peo­ple are fear­ful to come out at cer­tain times, peo­ple even afraid to speak out on crime be­cause of what could hap­pen to them,” he said

Near­by busi­ness own­ers, who did not want to speak on record, en­dorsed Carobero’s state­ment.

“Watch around, the place like a desert, no­body buy­ing,” a man sell­ing jew­ellery said.

New Ari­ma res­i­dent Mar­vin David be­lieves it’s dif­fi­cult to get a job in the Bor­ough, so one should look no fur­ther for an ex­pla­na­tion as to why crime is ram­pant.

He point­ed out: “It’s a del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion, mil­lions of dol­lars are wast­ed in this coun­try, yet we do not pri­or­i­tize job cre­ation. More could be done in this area for the young peo­ple be­cause they have a lot of po­ten­tial here, I’ve seen job pro­grammes work but we all know what goes on, in­stead of build­ing on it and mak­ing it bet­ter, the minute there’s an is­sue they scrap it.”

Mar­garet Fran­cis said she does not leave her home un­less she has to, and even then, ex­treme cau­tion is a pri­or­i­ty.

“Ari­ma ter­ri­ble! I does on­ly walk where I know po­lice pass­ing, and we on­ly take the bus be­cause plen­ty times you not sure who dri­ving those pri­vate cars and what can hap­pen to you,” she said.

There­in lies an­oth­er is­sue in Ari­ma that some be­lieve is linked to crime.

At the area’s bus ter­mi­nus, the Guardian Me­dia team was told Pres­i­dent of the Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, Li­nus Phillip want­ed to speak with us.

Phillip said the as­so­ci­a­tion has been plead­ing with Ari­ma May­or Cagney Casimire for a maxi taxi hub. He said taxi dri­vers have no place to park their ve­hi­cles and wait for pas­sen­gers and that could chase away le­git­i­mate forms of trans­porta­tion, putting peo­ple’s lives in dan­ger

A mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion point­ed to the cor­ner where mur­der vic­tim An­drea Bharatt was picked up by ab­duc­tors pos­ing as a taxi dri­ver and pas­sen­gers.

“It is more than 20 years we are try­ing to get a hub in Ari­ma, but with every new may­or the plans change and we are still on the streets. This has peo­ple tak­ing rides from peo­ple they’re not sup­posed to. Ari­ma is a main point for trans­porta­tion. You have peo­ple from Blan­chissuese, La Hor­quet­ta, Cara­po, San­gre Grande, all these peo­ple come here for trans­porta­tion,” Phillip said.

He said at one time con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en to plac­ing the maxi taxi hub in Mal­abar, but he is strong­ly op­posed to that plan.

“Now when you do things like this and re­move the le­gal trans­porta­tion away from the peo­ple what you are left with is a void for il­le­gal trans­porta­tion and it’s hap­pen­ing all over Trinidad,” he said.

Res­i­dents want change

With pub­lic safe­ty at stake and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions ap­proach­ing, some of the elec­torate are call­ing for the Bor­ough to be tak­en from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for the first time in a decade.

“Is time for change boy,” said Ren­rick Maraj. “It re­al­ly bit­ter out here, down on the street it dif­fer­ent boy, you can’t come out and live like you used to, every­body have to hold their lit­tle cor­ner and stay qui­et, 32 years I work­ing here and this is the hard­est set of times.”

Nicholas Pierre be­lieves the PNM coun­cil­lors had their time, and they’ve been found want­i­ng.

He said: “Time for a new every­thing be­cause noth­ing ain’t work­ing out, peo­ple bawl­ing, they have no work, rob­beries go­ing up, killing go­ing up.”

Guardian Me­dia asked Pierre if he be­lieves the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress/Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance part­ner­ship could wres­tle the Ari­ma Bor­ough away from the PNM.

“Tan­ty Kam­la al­ways has a chance in my books, be­cause since I grow­ing up it have a bridge up by me that she and Jack Warn­er built. If it wasn’t for them to this day we wouldn’t have got­ten that. I feel she will get a lit­tle change you know, be­cause PNM fail­ing right now, I be­ing re­al with you,” he said.

Dou­bles ven­dor Kevin Lal, who is al­so an Ari­ma res­i­dent, said the PNM will have to fight hard to hold on­to Ari­ma.

“They are talk­ing about lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form but when they come in­to pow­er watch and see noth­ing will be done. They need to talk less and do more for the peo­ple, the peo­ple need rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Some (PNM coun­cil­lors) may get through but I feel some of the places will have a lit­tle change too be­cause just by watch­ing peo­ple walk­ing by, they look sad and some of them, at the end of the day it could swing and go ei­ther way but I feel the PNM won’t win every­thing,” Lal said.

But that’s what the PNM has be­come ac­cus­tomed to in Ari­ma.

In 2013, the par­ty won all sev­en dis­tricts.. They re­peat­ed the feat in 2016 and 2019. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the elec­tion of Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian as D’Abadie/O’Meara MP on the Au­gust 10, 2020, Ari­ma Cen­tral be­came va­cant trig­ger­ing a bye elec­tion. In a shock re­sult, UNC can­di­date Shel­don ‘Fish’ Gar­cia won the dis­trict be­com­ing the sole UNC coun­cil­lor in Ari­ma.

Gar­cia is again de­fend­ing his seat, this time as a PNM can­di­date and there a strong feel­ing on the ground that he will take with him a large chunk of UNC votes due to his per­son­able char­ac­ter and pop­u­lar­i­ty.

In 2019 the Ari­ma Bor­ough’s reg­is­tered elec­torate was 29,600. How­ev­er, on­ly 9,815 ex­er­cised their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right.

The PNM will face the com­bined strength of the re­cent part­ner­ship be­tween UNC and NTA, with the lat­ter field­ing can­di­dates in two of Ari­ma’s sev­en disc­tricts.

May­or: Gangs in­fil­trat­ing Ari­ma

May­or Casimire be­lieves the PNM has a strong chance of to­tal dom­i­na­tion but said he has warned can­di­dates not to rest on the lau­rels of past elec­tions. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at what he called “the prom­e­nade” near the Ari­ma Velo­drome, Casimire, af­ter pledg­ing his love for the com­mu­ni­ty, ad­mit­ted that crime is a chal­lenge.

“Re­cent­ly we put an In­sta­gram-able arte­fact which said #I4TNT. A cou­ple weeks ago it was de­stroyed, so we have is­sues of so­cial de­viance, home­less­ness and we have is­sues with youth not hav­ing fo­cus,” he said.

The may­or claimed Ari­ma is no longer the num­ber one crime hot spot in the coun­try but said there is a re­al­i­sa­tion that the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice need prop­er fa­cil­i­ties and more re­sources.

“We have moved from num­ber 1, we are now num­ber 3. We have been over­tak­en by two oth­er ar­eas, but what we have done is the close col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice and the TTPS and pro­vid­ing re­sources for the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice has brought us to a point where we feel like we have a plat­form to make a large leap in solv­ing some of the is­sues of crime and that does not mean solv­ing crime, it means do­ing the do­ing the pa­trols, polic­ing and the in­tel­li­gence,” he said.

Casimire said more than $7 mil­lion was spent on re­sourc­ing the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice.

He al­so ad­mit­ted that Ari­ma is be­ing in­fil­trat­ed by crim­i­nal gangs who are mov­ing along the East/West Cor­ri­dor.

“Those who pur­sue crime, they move. So, when you lock down Port-of-Spain and lock down San Juan they come some­where where they think there’s less po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty. That’s why we need to keep vis­i­bil­i­ty. We have been told since 2017 that there are eight gangs op­er­at­ing out­side of Ari­ma and there­fore they come in­to Ari­ma,” he said.

Casimire said the fo­cus is on Ari­ma’s de­vel­op­ment: “This year was an ex­cep­tion­al one for us. We got $35 mil­lion for de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, we were able to ac­cess fund­ing for $33 mil­lion and un­spent bal­ances. This year we had 40 ap­proved projects, 20 drains and 20 roads, to­talling $17 mil­lion and then came the pro­cure­ment law and that would have dri­ven us back, so we are glad for the amend­ments.”

He said they are al­so part­ner­ing with the In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) to pro­vide Wi-Fi to a large por­tion of the Bor­ough in a project called Ari­ma Con­nect.

Asked whether coun­cil­lors had spent the last four years con­nect­ing with the peo­ple, the may­or said: “I am con­fi­dent in the work that we have done and that each of our coun­cil­lors were on the ground and in­ter­act­ing with the burgess­es.”

How­ev­er, at least two Ari­ma res­i­dents dis­agreed with the may­or’s state­ment.

“I don’t know noth­ing about that! Where I does see coun­cil­lors? Where they does be? I does on­ly see God! Too much mur­der! Too much crime! We need bet­ter!” Zil­la Thomas de­clared.

The gen­er­al view is that the peo­ple of Ari­ma want bet­ter for them­selves and their home­town be­cause the com­mu­ni­ty was found­ed on a foun­da­tion of fam­i­ly and to­geth­er­ness. While there is con­cern at the mo­ment, they be­lieve while the heart of Ari­ma still beats, there is hope.

As Krys­tal Man­swell point­ed out: “We are some of the best peo­ple out here, gen­er­ous, kind, we’re out­go­ing, we like to pump and we al­ways on our busi­ness.”

John Dabo agreed: “Ari­ma is the most beau­ti­ful place in the Caribbean, down to the va­grants have a good time. Ari­ma nice man!”