The return of the Tobago Jazz Experience after a three-year absence has been overshadowed by a recent upsurge in violent crime in the Bethel community.
Once known as a safe and peaceful community, Bethel has been shaken by violent crime as the most recent of the three murders recorded in Tobago over the last two months occurred there.
Long-time resident Eunicie Pantin the current crime rate is something she never witnessed in her almost seven decades of existence.
“We really don’t like that here, we never used to have that and it is so upsetting, she said. “For the year how much gone already? We not accustomed to that.”
Pantin no longer feels safe and admits that she is taking extra precautions at her Riseland Hill home.
“Hearing about the crime, all like me who used to be outside on the road all hour of the night, I don’t go in the road at all at all again. Seven months now I haven’t gone on the road,” she said.
The crime situation was even mentioned during the first event of the Tobago Jazz Experience, the Gospel Night on Thursday. In remarks before the start of the concert, Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Farley Augustine said prayers are needed to deal with crime and other societal ills.
Pantin admitted that the crime situation has caused her faith to waver.
“With all the things that going on you think people not saying a little word, but you doesn’t know where they going to do it and when they going to do it. That is the problem, you don’t know,” she said.
Another Bethel resident, Terrence David, 60, called for a top-down approach to crime fighting.
“Poor people cannot make guns, poor people cannot buy guns and you have all the rich people bringing in the guns. So all the measures taking place pertaining to crime is to facilitate the people at the top and that has to change,” he said.
Tobago’s homicide rate pales in comparison to Trinidad and David expressed concern about the role of Trinidadians in the current upsurge in violence on the island,
“A Tobagonian would not hurt you but when you have the twinning with the Trinidadian and the Tobagonian the Trinidadian tends to have some kind of influence over the Tobagonian and they get into crime based on that,” he said.
Other residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said business owners are reeling from violence and crime across the island.
Shop owner Cynthia Stephens said intervention is essential.
“When people hear about that and shootings they would be scared because nobody knows when they coming to do a shoot up. The authorities have to come around and visit the areas and talk to the young people because crime will humbug business and we don’t need that at this time,” she said.
