Carisa Lee

A Diego Mar­tin com­mu­ni­ty leader wants to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to dis­cuss ways to re­duce crime in the area. Quni­cy Fe­lix made the re­quest dur­ing the peace march/mo­tor­cade that he host­ed in the vicin­i­ty of Bagatelle Road on Sun­day.

Dozens of peo­ple, ac­com­pa­nied by of­fi­cers from the West End Po­lice Sta­tion took part in the march, chant­i­ng as they made their way through the streets: “What we walk­ing for?…Peace and love.”

Fe­lix ad­mit­ted that he was once in­volved in crime and apol­o­gised to the com­mu­ni­ty. He pledged to do every­thing in his pow­er to pre­vent an­oth­er young per­son from mak­ing the same mis­takes

“For me to do any­thing, for me to show a youth not to go down the di­rec­tion that I went down, I will­ing to do it and I will­ing for the Gov­ern­ment the Prime Min­is­ter…for he self to come and check in he con­stituen­cy. Mr Im­bert, we need to see you con­cern­ing to what go­ing on in the area,” Fe­lix said.

Da­ta from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) shows that Diego Mar­tin/Pe­tit Val­ley record­ed the third high­est mur­der count in 2022, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 38 killings. One was the mur­der of three-year-old Naz­im Owen on Oc­to­ber 22.

Fe­lix said one of the prob­lems con­tribut­ing to the high crime rate is that young peo­ple have noth­ing pro­duc­tive to do with their time.

One of the par­tic­i­pants in the peace march said they had writ­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley to ask for agri­cul­ture and forestry pro­grammes to be start­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty. He said the young peo­ple are will­ing to work.

“Long as we have grounds and cer­tain things to keep ac­tiv­i­ties it will al­ways have idle­ness and as the peo­ple does say the dev­il like idle hands so we need to change that,” he said.

Res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty said they ap­pre­ci­at­ed the ini­tia­tive.

“We like this walk,” an el­der­ly res­i­dent told Fe­lix as he walked past.

The po­lice feel the same. Sergeant Adams, of the West End Po­lice Sta­tion, said not too long ago crime in Care­nage was out of con­trol un­til res­i­dents got to­geth­er to achieve peace. He said if that strat­e­gy could work there it could work in Diego Mar­tin.

“They came to­geth­er and they go­ing strong. You know I am a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty and it hap­pened in Care­nage and I want to see it hap­pen here and the po­lice is al­ways here to sup­port and I’ll be more spe­cif­ic. If there are any un­der­ly­ing is­sues my door is al­ways open, we could trash it out,” Adams said.

Fe­lix hopes oth­er com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers will fol­low in his foot­steps.

“I wish if this could reach out to oth­er men who we call com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. Let we change we coun­try. We ain’t talk­ing about Diego Mar­tin alone, we talk­ing about the whole coun­try. We just mak­ing the whole coun­try in­to a mess,” he said.