Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Head of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Richard Smith briefly trad­ed his badge and kha­ki uni­form for a hat and beard as he and oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers shared toys, good­ies and good­will among res­i­dents of Train­line Vil­lage, St Au­gus­tine, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The event was part of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion’s Hand-in-Hand com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­gramme which sought to strength­en ties be­tween the po­lice and res­i­dents in Train­line Vil­lage.

The pro­gramme was launched in re­sponse to a spate of mur­ders and shoot­ings in the St Au­gus­tine neigh­bour­hood last year.

Be­gin­ning with the mur­ders of 16-year-old Dar­shan Ram­nauth and Geno Shah on Jan­u­ary 24, sev­en peo­ple were mur­dered be­tween Jan­u­ary and April 2023.

The mur­ders were be­lieved to be part of the ef­forts of a Tu­na­puna-based gang to in­tim­i­date and ex­tort vil­lagers.

A se­ries of po­lice and so­cial in­ter­ven­tions ini­ti­at­ed by then North­ern Di­vi­sion ACP Wayne Mys­tar re­stored some or­der to the once-trou­bled com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing at a brief­ing at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion be­fore the dis­tri­b­u­tion, Smith laud­ed the ini­tia­tive not­ing that the in­ter­ven­tion of po­lice through ‘hard’ an­ti-crime strate­gies and com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing pro­grammes have yield­ed re­sults.

“I al­so vis­it­ed the area with the team and I re­al­ly see the ap­pre­ci­a­tion the res­i­dents there have for the pres­ence of the po­lice.

“Since the team has been there we have seen a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes in that area and we have a nice syn­er­gy with the res­i­dents.”

Smith said fos­ter­ing stronger ties and trust with the com­mu­ni­ty was just as im­por­tant to crime-fight­ing as pa­trols and ar­rests, not­ing that po­lice in­tend­ed to re­store a greater sense of com­mu­ni­ty in the neigh­bour­hood by en­sur­ing dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties re­turned.

“We in­tend to bring back some of the ini­tia­tives the res­i­dents had in­side there.

“For in­stance, there was a Sun­day School that had to be stopped be­cause of the crime that was hap­pen­ing there.

“We will be bring­ing that back. We will be oc­cu­py­ing the spaces the crim­i­nals were oc­cu­py­ing and we are tak­ing it back.”

Head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion ACP Os­wain Subero, who al­so at­tend­ed the brief­ing, said the Hand-in-Hand ini­tia­tive was one of sev­er­al pro­grammes which sought to re­store trust and con­fi­dence in the neigh­bour­hoods deemed high risk.

He added that of­fi­cers in­tend­ed to work hard­er to achieve greater re­duc­tions in crime and vi­o­lence.

“With the sup­port of our stake­hold­ers, we in­tend to con­tin­ue in 2024 with the slo­gan of ‘Do­ing more in 2024.’

“So we look for­ward to a re­duc­tion in crime and even more stake­hold­ers to sup­port our var­i­ous ini­tia­tives and crime-pre­ven­tion pro­grammes that we will be do­ing in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and the North­ern North Di­vi­sion.”

The toys, gift bags and ham­pers were do­nat­ed by var­i­ous busi­ness­es both large and small from Curepe, St Au­gus­tine and Tu­na­puna.

At the event, fren­zied chil­dren and par­ents gath­ered on Warn­er Street sev­er­al me­tres in­side Train­line Vil­lage in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the ar­rival of San­ta Claus.

Ger­ard Coutain of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil thanked the of­fi­cers for their par­tic­i­pa­tion and spon­sors for their gen­eros­i­ty. He not­ed that the ini­tia­tive went be­yond crime sup­pres­sion as it hoped to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for Train­line Vil­lage res­i­dents and im­plored them to part­ner with the po­lice.

As Smith emerged from one of the near­by ve­hi­cles dressed as San­ta Claus to the tune of Jin­gle Bells, he was greet­ed by cheer­ing chil­dren.