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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Peace continues in Sea Lots but some residents wary

by

Shane Superville
5 days ago
20250311
Sea Lots residents walk along Production Avenue, where some calm has been restored after an intervention by their MP Keith Scotland on Sunday.

Sea Lots residents walk along Production Avenue, where some calm has been restored after an intervention by their MP Keith Scotland on Sunday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Less than a week af­ter Sea Lots res­i­dents ap­pealed for pro­tec­tion against re­peat­ed at­tacks and rob­beries, the calm achieved af­ter a peace deal was bro­kered re­mains in place with­in the Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty.

Last Wednes­day, a group of Pi­o­neer Dri­ve res­i­dents walked to the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sackville Street, in the cap­i­tal city, where they met with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin and ap­pealed for help.

One day lat­er, on Thurs­day, of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion and the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), met with the res­i­dents at the Sea Lots West Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and heard their con­cerns.

At the time, the res­i­dents claimed that the com­mu­ni­ty had frag­ment­ed in­to three fac­tions, where Pi­o­neer Dri­ve res­i­dents were at­tacked by young men from Pro­duc­tion Av­enue, to the east and the Sea Lots/ Beetham High­way, fur­ther west.

How­ev­er, as part of the on­go­ing in­ter­ven­tion, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land, SC, vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty on Sun­day where he said “calm was re­stored,” fol­low­ing a meet­ing with res­i­dents.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the neigh­bour­hood yes­ter­day, res­i­dents said there had been no in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence since the mat­ter was raised pub­licly.

At Pro­duc­tion Av­enue, res­i­dents al­so as­sured that there were no at­tacks on any­one, as they al­so dis­missed claims that they were in­sti­ga­tors of the strife.

One man, who pre­ferred not to be named, de­nied that res­i­dents in his neigh­bour­hood were in­volved in the at­tack of their Pi­o­neer Dri­ve neigh­bours, blam­ing their fears on lin­ger­ing con­cerns and “bad mem­o­ries” over past acts of vi­o­lence.

“Re­mem­ber, every­body has a mouth to talk. What they have to say has noth­ing to do with us.

“We nev­er robbed any­body or beat up any­body from across there (Pi­o­neer Dri­ve).

“Every­thing is calm, it’s about who got shoot over so from how long ago, they still have that in their mind, but every­thing is okay.”

An­oth­er man said, as a tes­ta­ment to the mend­ed ties be­tween fac­tions, he along with oth­er Pro­duc­tion Av­enue res­i­dents at­tend­ed a par­ty in Pi­o­neer Dri­ve as a show of good faith over the new peace.

“Just last night we went across there. The same three sides came to­geth­er and had a par­ty last night, so every­thing co­pacetic. We al­ready come back as one.”

How­ev­er, not all res­i­dents were con­vinced that the peace would be per­ma­nent as they con­tin­ued to avoid cross­ing the bound­aries be­tween Pi­o­neer Dri­ve and Pro­duc­tion Av­enue while keep­ing to them­selves.

Life­long Sea Lots res­i­dent, Ber­nice John, said she hoped the con­tin­ued po­lice pres­ence would be enough to main­tain the peace.

Re­call­ing past claims of calm be­tween hos­tile fac­tions, John, 70, said such treaties typ­i­cal­ly did not last very long.

“I don’t feel this war go done, be­cause the last time they had peace and it went back the same way.

“I liv­ing down here since I was born, make all my chil­dren, my grand­chil­dren, all my great-grand­chil­dren liv­ing here. It will cool down for a while and it will es­ca­late again.”

While in the neigh­bour­hood, sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers were seen pa­trolling in marked ve­hi­cles through the nar­row streets which con­nect­ed the com­mu­ni­ty, as of­fi­cers kept a close eye on any ac­tiv­i­ties.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said the sight of the po­lice was com­fort­ing. The res­i­dent hoped that the vis­its from the au­thor­i­ties would soothe any sim­mer­ing ten­sions, not­ing that res­i­dents in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties were rel­a­tives.

“Both sides of Sea Lots and down the high­way come like fam­i­ly. It’s fam­i­ly all over, so we don’t need no war. We just need peace.”


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