RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Scores of res­i­dents of the San Rafael area came out armed with plac­ards on Sat­ur­day dur­ing a walk, call­ing for peace in the area, as they high­light­ed the in­creas­ing rob­beries and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. The res­i­dents are now plead­ing with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­open the San Rafael Po­lice Sta­tion.

They be­lieve if the sta­tion was still open and op­er­at­ing there would not be such a high lev­el of crime in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The peace walk was or­gan­ised by three coun­cil­lors of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion in­clud­ing Bal­mati Gosyne, Ryan Ram­per­sad and John Leza­ma.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day morn­ing, Coun­cil­lor for the Las Lo­mas/San Rafael elec­toral dis­trict Gosyne said since the brazen rob­bery of Parish priest of the San Rafael Ro­man Catholic Church, Fr Roger Pa­ponette on Au­gust 18 rob­beries of a sim­i­lar na­ture have been on the rise.

On that morn­ing, Fr Pa­ponette was hog-tied, beat­en and robbed of a ve­hi­cle and per­son­al valu­ables at the pres­bytery.

“Since that in­ci­dent, there were busi­ness­es robbed, there were per­sons robbed of their per­son­al items. There were trucks that were ser­vic­ing the near­by shops al­so robbed. So it is a trend tak­ing place now in our area and I am cer­tain that the crim­i­nals know that we do not have a po­lice sta­tion and do not have po­lice pa­trolling our area,” Gosyne said.

“This is the sec­ond ap­peal we have made pub­licly for the au­thor­i­ties to re­open this sta­tion. We will con­tin­ue un­til we get that sta­tion opened be­cause we can­not go on to live like this. We are fear­ful. Peo­ple are fear­ful to even come out of their house. We see so many ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place at night and you want to know why it is so scarce. You are not see­ing so many peo­ple at­tend­ing the Di­vali func­tions and so on be­cause peo­ple are fear­ful of com­ing out to­day,” she added.

The San Rafael Po­lice Sta­tion was one of sev­en po­lice sta­tions that were “closed” and re-pur­posed in 2021. It now hous­es the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit and Sex­u­al Of­fences Unit to serve the north­ern and north­east­ern di­vi­sions.