Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Res­i­dents of Sea Lots say they wel­come the ini­tia­tive by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er to place 500 CCTV sur­veil­lance cam­eras in cer­tain ar­eas, in­clud­ing Beetham Es­tate, Mor­vant, Bel­mont and Sea Lots. "I wel­come it. We do not have any­thing to hide. We are open peo­ple but any­thing to im­prove the se­cu­ri­ty of the peo­ple is wel­come," said Michelle Matthews.

Giomar Mar­tinez said: "It is good. It would en­cour­age the life in the com­mu­ni­ty to be bet­ter. It's a good idea. I be­lieve in it." How­ev­er, Patrick Lewis said he would wel­come the ini­tia­tive if the Gov­ern­ment felt it was nec­es­sary but was not of that view.

He said: "Right now in Sea Lots we don't need that be­cause we are not war­ring or fight­ing with any­body. You could come and walk here any­time. But if the Gov­ern­ment in­sists, no prob­lem."

An­oth­er res­i­dent said: "While the res­i­dents feel safe with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, they re­al­ly can­not pro­tect or pre­vent an out­sider from com­ing in­to the com­mu­ni­ty to com­mit crime. At the end of the day the cam­eras re­al­ly work. I wel­come it be­cause re­gard­less to what, peo­ple get out of con­trol, so it's a good idea."

Warn­er made the an­nounce­ment on Thurs­day dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence and re­it­er­at­ed it in a meet­ing with the res­i­dents of Sea Lots lat­er that evening.

He re­port­ed­ly said the first phase of the an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive would see 500 new CCTV cam­eras in­stalled and ac­ti­vat­ed along­side 389 ex­ist­ing cam­eras to pro­vide sur­veil­lance cov­er­age for Laven­tille, Mor­vant, Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons and To­ba­go.

The ex­ist­ing 389 cam­eras were in­stalled by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2009 for the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing. "These 500 cam­eras, which will be in­stalled al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, will cost the Gov­ern­ment an av­er­age of $5 mil­lion a month, $60 mil­lion a year," Warn­er said.

Crime on the de­cline

Dur­ing the meet­ing with the Sea Lots res­i­dents, Warn­er said: "These cam­eras will tell the po­lice who did what and where they go and so on. This is an ef­fort to fight and re­duce crime which was al­ready on the de­cline. "They (re­porters) asked me to tell them how crime is go­ing but I didn't tell them noth­ing be­cause if I say any­thing, they would twist the truth and turn it in a neg­a­tive way. "I said be­fore I have no in­ten­tions of telling them how many mur­ders. They could say what they want, not from me," Warn­er said.

He added: "In the time be­ing, it's not any­body busi­ness but mine. Sure the po­lice could tell, that is the po­lice work. I am not go­ing to say there has not been any mur­der in Sea Lots for two or three days. "In time, the coun­try would re­alise for it­self that there has been a gen­er­al re­duc­tion in crime."

Mean­while, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams com­mend­ed the res­i­dents for their co-op­er­a­tion with the po­lice, say­ing there had been no­tice­able im­prove­ments. He said: "The peo­ple in Sea Lots have im­proved their en­gage­ment, from a polic­ing per­spec­tive. There has been vast im­prove­ment in 2012 over 2011 and pre­vi­ous years. "We want you to con­tin­ue with that trust so that we can find ways and means to make Sea Lots and oth­er ar­eas gen­er­al­ly safe and se­cure."