Derek Achong

100 of­fi­cers de­ployed to the Clifton Cir­cu­lar and Bev­er­ly Hills ar­eas

Reg­u­lar po­lice and army pa­trols in the neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties of East Dry Riv­er and Laven­tille have failed to damp­en the vi­o­lent "turf war" be­tween ri­val gangs, with one woman and her young chil­dren los­ing their home in an ar­son at­tack on Tues­day af­ter­noon.When a news team from the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the Clifton Hill com­mu­ni­ty of East Dry Riv­er yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, res­i­dents said they could not sleep at night for fear of fur­ther fire-bomb­ing at­tacks on their homes.

"We have to sleep with one eye open. If we hear a dog walk­ing in the yard in the night, we does have to duck for cov­er. We don't know when they will strike again," said one young woman, who wished to re­main uniden­ti­fied.While tour­ing the com­mu­ni­ty for al­most two hours yes­ter­day, heav­i­ly-armed po­lice and sol­diers were seen pa­trolling the area on foot and in ve­hi­cles.

Sev­er­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cers were al­so seen guard­ing the smok­ing re­mains of the fire­bombed hous­es. The pa­trols seemed to oc­cur every 15 min­utes.The most re­cent ar­son at­tack hap­pened around 6 pm on Tues­day at a small apart­ment on Clifton Hill Cir­cu­lar Road.Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Crys­tal Scott left home around 4 pm to go to work in Port-of-Spain.

Two hours lat­er, po­lice re­ceived a re­port of a fire at her home. Fire of­fi­cers from the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed but were un­able to put out the blaze be­fore it en­gulfed Scott's apart­ment. Her two chil­dren were not at home at the time.The apart­ment is a stone's throw away from four oth­er hous­es which were re­port­ed­ly set alight by a gang on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

The ar­son at­tacks are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Se­nior Supt Carl­ton Al­leyne, ASP Ajith Per­sad, In­sp Sa­hadeo Singh and Cpl Paul, of the Port-of-Spain CID and In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF).One man who lives in the area ex­plained that the com­mu­ni­ty had an ir­reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply and had not had wa­ter for the past three weeks."If we had wa­ter in the taps at least we would have been able to make a buck­et brigade to try to out the fire," he lament­ed.

Res­i­dents wel­comed the ad­di­tion­al po­lice pres­ence but said as soon as the of­fi­cers left the war­fare restart­ed be­tween gangs in their area and Bev­er­ly Hills and John John, Laven­tille.