An­na-Lisa Paul

Ten days af­ter the joint po­lice/army ini­tia­tive was in­tro­duced in Laven­tille to quell gang vi­o­lence, po­lice of­fi­cers are elat­ed that there have been no mur­ders, or re­ports of se­ri­ous crimes, rob­beries and vi­o­lence in the area.

The ini­tia­tive was in­tro­duced at the be­gin­ning of March, af­ter gang vi­o­lence claimed sev­er­al lives and left more than 20 home­less as feud­ing gang mem­bers burnt homes at Clifton Hill, Laven­tille.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, along with the head of the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF) Supt Carl­ton Al­leyne, con­firmed the ini­tia­tive, which was due to end on March 11, would con­tin­ue in­def­i­nite­ly.Af­ter com­plaints from po­lice on the ground that they were over­worked and ex­haust­ed, Al­leyne said a shift sys­tem had been worked out so teams of of­fi­cers would be ro­tat­ed every two weeks.

Ap­plaud­ing the com­mu­ni­ty's ef­fort to work with the po­lice yes­ter­day, Cpl Hem­raj Sir­ju of the Besson Street Sta­tion said: "Peo­ple are wel­com­ing the po­lice pa­trols in the area. We are see­ing the ma­ture res­i­dents stand­ing up and sup­port­ing us but there are about ten per cent who choose to rob and shoot and they are the ones re­al­ly caus­ing prob­lems."

Say­ing po­lice could be found play­ing games and teach­ing young­sters, Sir­ju said they went in­to the com­mu­ni­ty to "get the guns out of the hills of Laven­tille."He ad­mit­ted: "It is a task, but we are mak­ing a good ef­fort. It is un­fair to say that all of Laven­tille is bad, be­cause when you go in­to the area, you can see they are reg­u­lar, nor­mal peo­ple liv­ing in fear, be­cause there is a lot of good up there."