Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams says after the escalation of crime in the Duncan Street, Port-of-Spain, area over the last few weeks, the police have revisited all they were doing and will now implement key measures to ensure there are no similar outbursts of violence in the community again.Heightened police presence is one measure and Williams said it was necessary to prevent the crime before it happened.He said so yesterday at Duncan Street, Port-of-Spain, after he visited the beleaguered community with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and an entourage of Government MPs and national security personnel in the wake of six murders in the area on Wednesday.
Williams said the question of why Duncan Street had been experiencing such an exceptional level of violence over the last four years needed to be looked at in a broader social context."It's not just the policing aspect of it. We need to look at crime in a broader context of social issues. Policing is one aspect. It goes beyond that," he added.Williams said 138 homicides in four years in an area of a 200-metre radius in the Nelson, Duncan and St Paul Streets area were phenomenal.
He said the police had some information as to the causes of the recent spike in crime in the area and it involved issues between gangs."It is a straight case of gang-generated violence in the Duncan Street area," he said.Also commenting on the situation yesterday was Natasha Rogers, mother of 16-year old Niam Antoine, who was killed by gunmen on Duncan Street on Wednesday.Saying her life may be in danger as well, she said she cried when she told Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar her son was born in pain and lived in pain. The PM, she said, cried with her."He was (treated) like a dog on the street, like rubbish you kick aside." Rogers said her faith in God was sustaining her.