Akash Sama­roo

Road­side veg­etable ven­dor An­n­marie Stephen’s stall is a stone’s throw away from the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion but she has very lit­tle love for the of­fi­cers there.

“If it have three good po­lice in there it have plen­ty,” she de­clared loud­ly, “Them in­side there is the worst in the coun­try. The po­lice and them go­ing around do­ing mis­chief and blam­ing peo­ple like you and me but is the po­lice in crime in Grande.”

Oth­er ven­dors in the east­ern com­mu­ni­ty al­so said they don’t trust the po­lice, es­pe­cial­ly since 13 of­fi­cers were de­tained for ques­tion­ing about al­leged ex­tor­tion of busi­ness places. At Leela’s, an es­tab­lish­ment that sells dou­bles and oth­er In­di­an del­i­ca­cies, em­ploy­ee Ralph Laloon said some of those of­fi­cers were fre­quent cus­tomers.

“You see you can’t trust no­body, even po­lice of­fi­cers. You can’t trust them, you may talk to them, they may talk to you but peo­ple like them on a whole you can’t trust. Look what hap­pen to them, and they does come here and buy and talk nor­mal like we talk­ing here and look what they do,” he said.

On the East­ern Main Road, veg­etable ven­dor Pe­ter Trot­man ex­pressed dis­may at the au­dac­i­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers who ask cit­i­zens to come to them with in­for­ma­tion about crim­i­nals.

He said, “They com­ing all over so­cial me­dia and say­ing bring in this and bring in that, all that and watch what go­ing on. Them is the crime.”

Many res­i­dents ex­pressed con­cern that they are los­ing a key al­ly in the fight against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment and that bat­tle is get­ting hard­er to win.

A fish ven­dor ad­mit­ted he has tak­en to set­ting aside “rob­bery mon­ey” for when he is con­front­ed by rob­bers.

“How you mean? I have to do that. You want to dead out here or what?” said the ven­dor who asked to re­main anony­mous.

“Right now we buy­ing fish at about $30 a pound and when you go­ing to buy you go­ing with mon­ey. Some­times you have to hide the mon­ey all about, you have to keep a lit­tle bit in your pock­et in case they stop you. Look the oth­er day I was at the beach, I buy200 pounds of king­fish, I leave it on the box, rain start to fall, I went in the camp when I went back every­thing gone.”

“This place gone through!” an­oth­er man shout­ed in the back­ground.

How­ev­er, life­long San­gre Grande res­i­dent Bion­di Jat­tan took ex­cep­tion to that state­ment.

“Grande is a nice place you know. It have places you can still leave your door un­locked, it have good, good peo­ple in Grande but is just a few ar­eas that stig­ma­tise the place,” the 33-year-old said.

Res­i­dents said one of the prob­lems ar­eas is Pic­ton Road Ex­ten­sion. When the Guardian Me­dia crew ar­rived in that area, we were ap­proached by Don­ald Lib­ert who warned us about pro­ceed­ing fur­ther.

“In­side there they does kill peo­ple and thing boy. I don’t know what caus­ing it, if it’s drugs or some oth­er damn thing. It re­al bad in there boy,” he said.

Many of the res­i­dents de­clined to speak to us out of fear, al­though they all agreed with the “hotspot” la­bel as­signed to their com­mu­ni­ty.

A pass­er-by who agreed to speak with us off the record point­ed out that a short dis­tance away, six-year-old Kylie Mal­oney was shot and killed in Jan­u­ary.

“It have a lot of mur­ders go­ing on in the back here,” the el­der­ly woman told us. She blamed “squat­ters” for chang­ing the cul­ture of the street.

“The place get­ting hot. They say peo­ple from Laven­tille com­ing in. Is a set of peo­ple, you don’t even know who they are, a set of peo­ple pass­ing through here and you don’t know them and the po­lice do­ing noth­ing about it, They pass through the Co­ca right here and they do­ing noth­ing,” she

As he sat in his gallery, 78-year-old Ed­ward La­fon, who has lived in the area for 70 years, said he was at a loss for words on what has be­come of the com­mu­ni­ty.

He said, “This place used to be nice, but boy, the place change up. Crime big on the whole but Grande is the worst, the youths and them made this a hotspot.”

Some res­i­dents of­fered so­lu­tions, in­clud­ing the re­sump­tion of hang­ings and turn­ing to re­li­gion. David Joseph ques­tioned the val­ue of the re­cent Cari­com crime sym­po­sium.

“Is on­ly men with suit and tie, that thing they had in Hy­att. Where the man from down­stairs? He ain’t com­ing there be­cause they keep­ing it for the up­stairs big boys, so noth­ing for the man from the ground, noth­ing from the grass­roots,” he said

Guardian Me­dia asked for spe­cif­ic crime sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for the East­ern Di­vi­sion. While the ma­jor­i­ty of the ques­tions re­mained unan­swered up to press time, the TTPS did in­di­cate that there have been 13 mur­ders in the Di­vi­sion and five of them have been solved.