An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The qui­et com­mu­ni­ty of Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine, was in the na­tion­al spot­light be­tween Jan­u­ary and May 2023, af­ter gun­men killed sev­en per­sons, in­clud­ing a moth­er of three and a preg­nant teenag­er’s hus­band.

The spate of mur­ders left res­i­dents scared to ven­ture out and sent oth­ers run­ning from the area.

Ac­cept­ing the chal­lenge in Au­gust 2023 to trans­form the com­mu­ni­ty and ad­dress the trau­ma holis­ti­cal­ly, of­fi­cers of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion part­nered with a team of com­mit­ted civil­ians to es­tab­lish the Hand In Hand (HIH) ini­tia­tive.

As they em­barked on a five-part plan to re­store peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the area, po­lice of­fi­cers, along with per­son­nel from the Tu­na­puna Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice and the team of the HIH, went to work on demon­strat­ing how the soft­er side of polic­ing works.

The plan, which was rolled out in phas­es, in­clud­ed com­mu­ni­ty walk­a­bouts; food ham­pers and cloth­ing dri­ves; a health fair; an an­nu­al Christ­mas treat; re­moval/clean-up of garbage in the com­mu­ni­ty; and in­fra­struc­tur­al up­grades to drains and bridges.

Ex­cit­ed as they again gath­ered with res­i­dents at the Free­man Road Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre yes­ter­day, ahead of the re­open­ing of schools on Mon­day, the team pre­sent­ed gifts to 80 chil­dren and 60 food ham­pers to needy fam­i­lies from Free­man Road, Ben­ny Lane and Dook­ie Trace.

Re­veal­ing that the an­nu­al event was just one part of the re­la­tion­ship the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) now shared with the com­mu­ni­ty, WPC Re­anne Nicholas-Di­az, of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion, said, “We start­ed be­cause of the up­surge in crime in the Free­man Road area and based on sta­tis­tics, I can safe­ly say that crime is on the low.”

Prais­ing se­nior of­fi­cials for sup­port­ing this soft­er ap­proach, which in­clud­ed meet­ing the peo­ple at their lev­el and hear­ing what they need­ed, she said they have had to work on re­as­sur­ing res­i­dents that the po­lice were not there to look for rea­sons to ar­rest any­one or cre­ate dis­com­fort for them.

Nicholas-Di­az said res­i­dents were walk­ing the streets once again and open­ly in­ter­act­ing the po­lice in the com­mu­ni­ty and of­fi­cers were even be­ing in­vit­ed to al­most every event, in­clud­ing birth­days, fu­ner­als and prayers.

She said of­fi­cers were among those res­i­dents were now reach­ing out to when they were sick and need­ed trans­port to get to the hos­pi­tal.

She de­clared, “Free­man Road is a part of our fam­i­ly and we love them dear­ly.”

HIH PRO Ger­ard Coutain said, “We did a lot of coun­selling, we tried to do me­di­a­tion. We tried just speak­ing to them and hear­ing their con­cerns and just show­ing them there are dif­fer­ent ways of reach­ing to ten.”

While sev­er­al adults de­clined to speak on the record about how they felt the ini­tia­tive had pro­gressed, they agreed it was a breath of fresh air to be able to come out­side and walk the streets freely.

One woman said, “I just glad we doh had­da wor­ry bout strange cars com­ing, not know­ing if a gun­man com­ing for yuh or yuh chirren.”

As a rel­a­tive who lost some­one to gun vi­o­lence back in 2023, she added, “My fam­i­ly still scared. Every time you hear a loud noise, we does jump ... but I hap­py the po­lice here now.”

A male res­i­dent smiled broad­ly as he re­called, “There was a time yuh couldn’t come out yuh house in the morn­ing or yuh get­ting bul­let. Now, we could walk to the shop and yuh not fright­en, think­ing every car is some­body com­ing to shoot and kill.”