An­na-Lisa Paul

Res­i­dents of Aranguez, El So­cor­ro, San Juan and Mt Lam­bert yes­ter­day de­clared them­selves to be “soft tar­gets,” as they said crim­i­nal el­e­ments are open­ly hunt­ing them – a de­vel­op­ment they have placed square­ly on the shoul­ders of the cur­rent head of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion (NED), Snr Supt Mervyn Ed­wards.

Ac­cus­ing Ed­wards of dis­miss­ing strate­gies and crime-fight­ing poli­cies im­ple­ment­ed un­der his pre­de­ces­sor, ACP Win­ston Ma­haraj, when he as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ju­ris­dic­tion, the Aranguez Vil­lage Coun­cil claimed Ed­wards’ cav­a­lier de­ci­sions had now led to an in­crease in crime with­in the area, in­clud­ing a spike in mur­ders and home in­va­sions.

Dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing to ad­dress the crime is­sue at the Aranguez Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, San Juan, yes­ter­day, Aranguez Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil vice pres­i­dent Safraz Ali led a lob­by for Ed­wards’ re­moval.

“In the past, we have had very high per­form­ing Snr Supts, which start­ed when Roger Alexan­der was in charge of the NED, and it con­tin­ued un­der Snr Supt Sagram­s­ingh, and it con­tin­ued af­ter with Snr Supt Win­ston Ma­haraj.”

Call­ing on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who was at the meet­ing, to act on their re­quest, Ali said, “When these guys were in charge of the di­vi­sion, Min­is­ter, we had good per­for­mance. The crime wasn’t as bad as it is and res­i­dents could have come out day­time and night-time...a lit­tle more free.”

He ar­gued that fol­low­ing the chang­ing of the guard, “All hell broke loose.”

He said the ban­dits had now be­come more brazen and bold and were re­gard­ing res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers in the NED as sit­ting ducks.

Ali said, “They not on­ly com­ing to rob alone, they com­ing to ter­rorise and in­cite fear and vic­timise and bru­talise and pun­ish phys­i­cal­ly.”

Ali’s claims were echoed by coun­cil­lor Amit Sook­nanan, who said the crime sit­u­a­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly been un­der con­trol but now, “we are all un­der at­tack.”

Say­ing the com­mu­ni­ties had been brought to­geth­er through crime and the chance to ar­tic­u­late their con­cerns to Hinds yes­ter­day, Ali spoke frankly as he said, “The se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent for the NED, present­ly Mr Ed­wards, he has failed and dropped the ball of se­cur­ing the res­i­dents of Aranguez and en­vi­rons.”

As the packed room broke in­to ap­plause, Sook­nanan con­tin­ued, “This is a very un­com­fort­able sit­u­a­tion be­cause we have nev­er had to speak of that high of­fice in to­tal dis­re­gard like to­day.

“But it must be re­turned, the favour must be re­turned. And if he has no in­ter­est in serv­ing us in one of the high­est of­fices of the po­lice... then we have no in­ter­est in keep­ing him there ei­ther.”

He al­so claimed he had been in­tim­i­dat­ed by of­fi­cers be­cause he had spo­ken out on the is­sue be­fore.

“You don’t want to work with no­body in this area, and I ask why be­cause the of­fice that he holds has no oth­er iden­ti­ty but the TTPS,” Sook­nanan al­leged.

Both Ali and Sook­nanan said Ed­wards had been in­vit­ed to yes­ter­day’s meet­ing but had de­clined due to a pri­or en­gage­ment and al­so on the premise that it was a not re­al po­lice meet­ing. They said Ed­wards told them he was or­gan­is­ing a TTPS com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing on Thurs­day which would fea­ture Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

How­ev­er, Snr Supt Roger Alexan­der, who is now the head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion and is al­so a res­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty, was al­so at the meet­ing, sat at the head ta­ble and ad­dressed the gath­er­ing briefly.