SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

In­creased night­ly po­lice pa­trols in the La Ro­main dis­trict be­cause of home in­va­sions were re­quest­ed dur­ing a po­lice town meet­ing on Thurs­day night. It was al­so re­vealed that de­spite a drop in se­ri­ous crimes, there were 16 re­port­ed sex­u­al of­fences in­clud­ing 11 against mi­nors which oc­curred in school.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh made the re­quest for the pa­trols at the meet­ing in St Bene­dict’s Col­lege in La Ro­main.

While the area is not a large busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, Singh said sev­er­al busi­ness own­ers re­side in and around La Ro­main.

He said, “We want to sug­gest to the TTPS that night­ly pa­trols be in­creased. We have an un­for­tu­nate crime phe­nom­e­non that has been oc­cur­ring over the last cou­ple of years of in­creased home in­va­sions, es­pe­cial­ly tar­get­ed at busi­ness own­ers and se­nior cit­i­zens.”

Head of the South­ern Di­vi­sion Se­nior Supt Bri­an Sood­een not­ed that there were six res­i­den­tial rob­beries with six peo­ple be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged for home in­va­sions and four firearms were re­cov­ered in the San Fer­nan­do dis­trict for this year so far.

Quot­ing fig­ures from the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch, Sood­een added that there were 91 se­ri­ous crimes and 11 mi­nor crimes in San Fer­nan­do this year, so far.

“Se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes de­creased by 31 per cent when com­pared to same pe­ri­od last year. Rob­bery, sex­u­al of­fences and gen­er­al lar­ce­ny were the top of­fences,” he ex­plained.

Sood­en said there were three mur­ders, two in La Ro­main and the oth­er in Dun­can Vil­lage, while there were five wound­ings and shoot­ings, five lar­ce­ny of mo­tor ve­hi­cles, and 23 rob­beries, six of which were res­i­den­tial rob­beries. He said all the com­mer­cial rob­beries oc­curred at bars. Of the 16 sex­u­al of­fences re­port­ed, he said 11 were against chil­dren with two oc­cur­ring in a school.

Not­ing that he was born in La Ro­main, the se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer re­called a bur­glary at his home when he was just five years old which left him feel­ing hope­less.

“See­ing my moth­er peep­ing through a crease in the locked bed­room door, and she was prob­a­bly pray­ing that this per­son does not break down that door to harm us, I felt hope­less. I don’t know if it was that night or some­time soon af­ter I wished that I was a po­lice of­fi­cer to do some­thing,” he re­mem­bered.

How­ev­er, Sood­en said he was now in a po­si­tion to do some­thing about crime and any oth­er is­sue af­fect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

He said he could not do it alone and need­ed the help of his ded­i­cat­ed team and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.

“The key to pre­vent­ing crime is earn­ing pub­lic sup­port. We must work close­ly to­geth­er to iden­ti­fy and solve prob­lems to im­prove our qual­i­ty of life,” he said.

Sood­een ad­mit­ted, that po­lice of­fi­cers could al­so im­prove their ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty by in­creas­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty, fol­low­ing up on re­ports and in­creas­ing the de­tec­tion rate.

Some of the is­sues raised by the mem­bers of the pub­lic at the meet­ing were the un­be­com­ing at­ti­tude of some po­lice of­fi­cers, derelict po­lice ve­hi­cles and school vi­o­lence.