KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While the gov­ern­ment has de­clared an­oth­er state of emer­gency (SoE) to curb crime in parts of T&T, suc­cess in the South­ern Di­vi­sion will be mea­sured not on­ly by ar­rests and in­dict­ments but by how peace­ful the com­mu­ni­ty re­mains af­ter the pe­ri­od ends.

Gold Com­man­der of the SoE, DCP Suzette Mar­tin, said the South­ern Di­vi­sion faces a range of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing mur­ders, rob­beries, nar­co-traf­fick­ing and stolen ve­hi­cles.

She said polic­ing is com­pli­cat­ed by the le­gal sys­tem, as some peo­ple are charged, re­leased on bail and con­tin­ue of­fend­ing.

Pre­vi­ous di­vi­sion­al sta­tis­tics and po­lice brief­in­gs have shown Cen­tral, North­ern and Port-of-Spain di­vi­sions record­ing the high­est lev­els of vi­o­lent crime in re­cent years, while South­ern, East­ern, and North Cen­tral di­vi­sions fall in the mod­er­ate range.

West­ern, South West­ern, and To­ba­go di­vi­sions re­port the low­est crime lev­els. With­in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, San Fer­nan­do has the high­est over­all crime vol­ume.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Pleas­antville, Em­ba­cadere and Mon Re­pos are key hotspots for shoot­ings, mur­ders, rob­beries, in­clud­ing busi­ness rob­beries and firearm of­fences.

In sub­ur­ban and rur­al dis­tricts, Mara­bel­la has record­ed shoot­ings and rob­beries, while Gas­par­il­lo has seen sev­er­al vi­o­lent in­ci­dents over the years. The Bar­rack­pore-Debe cor­ri­dor re­ports few­er se­ri­ous crimes, but re­cur­ring firearm of­fences per­sist.

Mar­tin said com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment and cul­tur­al change are es­sen­tial to curb crime.

“We are strate­gis­ing how to make the coun­try safer with these pow­ers and max­imise the re­sults you want to see,” she said. “Even in schools, we see stu­dents fight­ing, so we are dis­cussing what oth­er in­ter­ven­tions may be re­quired to achieve our suc­cess.”

The Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Busi­ness Cham­ber wel­comed the height­ened po­lice and army pres­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the down­town shop­ping dis­trict.

Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said one mea­sure of suc­cess would be whether the re­duced crime lev­els per­sist af­ter the SoE ends.

“It would be a mea­sure of suc­cess if, when the SoE ends, the re­duced lev­el of crime con­tin­ues and we see a fur­ther drop in se­ri­ous crimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders,” Singh said.

Singh not­ed that fol­low­ing the pre­vi­ous SoE, mur­ders and oth­er crimes in­creased al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, em­pha­sis­ing the need for sus­tained en­force­ment and com­mu­ni­ty co­op­er­a­tion.

He al­so high­light­ed that vis­i­ble law en­force­ment pres­ence de­ters crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and re­as­sures the pub­lic.

“Some busi­ness per­sons feel more se­cure when a state of emer­gency is in ef­fect be­cause of the po­lice pres­ence. The po­lice have greater ar­rest pow­ers and less tol­er­ance for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, and with army sup­port, cit­i­zens can go about their dai­ly lives in a safer en­vi­ron­ment,” Singh said. He added that erad­i­cat­ing gangs and en­gag­ing youths will al­so be a crit­i­cal mea­sure of long-term suc­cess.

Erad­i­cat­ing gangs and en­gag­ing youths re­main crit­i­cal to en­sur­ing long-term re­duc­tions in se­ri­ous crime, which the cham­ber sees as the ul­ti­mate mea­sure of suc­cess af­ter the SoE ends.