An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Ten­sions re­mained high in Sea Lots last evening, as a group of young men con­tin­ued their vi­o­lent at­tacks against each oth­er, as well as law-abid­ing res­i­dents, de­spite the fact that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was in the com­mu­ni­ty try­ing to me­di­ate for a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion.

In fact, while Sea Lots West res­i­dents were still meet­ing with po­lice re­gard­ing the con­flict with res­i­dents liv­ing in Sea Lots Cen­tral, a young man was am­bushed and al­most beat­en by a gang of men as he made his way home.

Eleanor Grant al­most faint­ed as she ran along Pi­o­neer Dri­ve to­wards the Beetham High­way just be­fore mid­day on hear­ing the news, pray­ing and hop­ing her son’s life would be spared. She was lat­er made to sit on a bench out­side a shop and giv­en wa­ter to drink by an­oth­er fe­male res­i­dent.

Cry­ing and clutch­ing the woman in a tight hug, Grant wait­ed on word as to whether her son was safe.

As word spread that he was be­ing chased, Grant and oth­er res­i­dents rushed out with the po­lice trail­ing be­hind, as In­sp Joel Braith­waite dis­patched of­fi­cers who were in the area to as­sist and al­so called for back-up.

Guardian Me­dia was lat­er told Grant’s son es­caped but was un­able to in­ter­view him.

Yes­ter­day’s meet­ing be­tween of­fi­cers from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and the Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion came one day af­ter a group of more than 30 res­i­dents marched to the Port-of-Spain CID to beg of­fi­cers to in­ter­vene in the on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion.

Stress­ing they on­ly want­ed peace and for the in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ty con­flict to be re­solved quick­ly, the res­i­dents yes­ter­day agreed Sea Lots should nev­er have been di­vid­ed.

Res­i­dents liv­ing along Pro­duc­tion Dri­ve are now re­ferred to as Sea Lots East, while those liv­ing along Pi­o­neer Dri­ve are Sea Lots West, with those liv­ing along the Wright­son Road/Beetham High­way be­ing re­ferred to as Sea Lots Cen­tral.

In­di­cat­ing they were no longer safe as they had to walk along the wa­ter­front to ac­cess their homes, the west res­i­dents called for a po­lice post to be set up.

Pro­vid­ing as­sur­ances that yes­ter­day was the first in a se­ries of meet­ings they in­tend to have with the fac­tions with­in Sea Lots, Braith­waite ex­plained, “This is re­al­ly a con­tin­u­a­tion of an on­go­ing war that has been tak­ing place in Sea Lots for quite some time.”

Told that it was ini­ti­at­ed back in 2005, he re­vealed, “The res­i­dents are claim­ing there has been a po­lit­i­cal di­vide and be­cause of that, they are see­ing de­vel­op­ment in cer­tain parts of the com­mu­ni­ty while oth­er parts of the com­mu­ni­ty don’t like that oth­er ar­eas are be­ing de­vel­oped faster than theirs.”

He added that “the al­lo­ca­tion of con­tracts” was an­oth­er of the rea­sons list­ed for the war but com­mend­ed those res­i­dents who took a stand in de­mand­ing peace pre­vails.

He ac­knowl­edged, “Rather than meet­ing vi­o­lence with vi­o­lence, the res­i­dents chose to go to Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion, where they had a meet­ing with the Com­mis­sion­er (Ju­nior Ben­jamin).”

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing at the Sea Lots West Com­mu­ni­ty and Home­work Cen­tre, Braith­waite ex­pressed sur­prise the com­mu­ni­ty had be­come so seg­re­gat­ed.

“We need to get a grip on this be­fore it gets out of hand,” he vowed.

He said once meet­ings with the fac­tions are con­clud­ed, the po­lice will have a bet­ter idea how to pro­ceed in terms of bring­ing peace back to the area.

Asked how the po­lice in­tend­ed to en­sure the safe­ty of all res­i­dents in the in­ter­im, he said as of yes­ter­day, “cer­tain in­struc­tions had been giv­en to es­tab­lish and main­tain a heavy po­lice pres­ence with­in this com­mu­ni­ty and that is go­ing to con­tin­ue in­to the night as well, so the res­i­dents can rest as­sured the po­lice are present and we are work­ing with them to bring some lev­el of nor­mal­cy here.”

Speak­ing with re­porters ahead of the meet­ing with the po­lice, Ja­da Mor­ris wel­comed the re­sponse by the au­thor­i­ties.

Asked what they want­ed, she said, “My ex­pec­ta­tion go­ing for­ward is that each and every per­son in the com­mu­ni­ty can feel safe to walk in any part of Sea Lots. I want Sea Lots back as one, how it sup­posed to be, how it was. It is a small place and I want every­body to come to­geth­er as one and that is what we are try­ing to push for here.”

Say­ing she had reached her break­ing point af­ter an el­der­ly mem­ber of her fam­i­ly was beat­en as she re­turned home from J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions on Mon­day, she added, “That was the break­ing point to say enough is enough. They vi­o­lat­ing chil­dren, women and the per­sons that were beat­en were not crim­i­nals.”

Call­ing on all moth­ers and women from all parts of Sea Lots to come out against the small group of young men, all in their teens, who were ter­ror­is­ing them, Mor­ris said the sit­u­a­tion was over­bear­ing and need­ed to stop now.

Ar­tic­u­lat­ing what many of those present felt and ex­pressed, Natasha Spencer caused tears to flow when she read a short po­em de­scrib­ing the area and peo­ple.

Re­fer­ring to the on­go­ing war, she asked, “How much sons we lost? How much broth­ers we lost? How much un­cles we lost? How much chil­dren in here with­out a fa­ther?”

Say­ing the youths re­spon­si­ble need­ed guid­ance, she cried, “We giv­ing up too much on we chil­dren now. We sup­posed to stand by them and we sup­posed put down we foot and say enough is enough. This is not Sea Lots. We ain’t di­vid­ing Sea Lots. We for­give them.”

She re­it­er­at­ed, “We don’t want war.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the area’s rep­u­ta­tion was less than stel­lar, she added, “We want a dif­fer­ent name and a dif­fer­ent look.”

Spencer said the time had come for the res­i­dents to turn a new page in its his­to­ry, as they were los­ing their homes and one an­oth­er through the in-fight­ing.