A sense of peace has been re­stored in the Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine com­mu­ni­ty.

Two years af­ter the small and unas­sum­ing area shot in­to the lime­light fol­low­ing a spate of gang-re­lat­ed killings that claimed sev­en lives, res­i­dents are once more re­laxed enough to ven­ture out of their homes and even in­ter­act open­ly with the po­lice.

Close to 50 peo­ple ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion from of­fi­cers of the North­ern North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion to at­tend a Gang and Ex­tor­tion Aware­ness Meet­ing at the St Au­gus­tine South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine on Wednes­day evening.

Dur­ing the in­ter­ac­tive ses­sion, sev­er­al res­i­dents ap­plaud­ed the po­lice for not giv­ing up on them.

One man said, “Even when we was scared to come out and talk, they gave us that hope that they could fix things and they did.

“A lot has im­proved since they came in and yes, we still scared as it could change in a snap, but so far, they have been true to their word.”

The man’s wife added, “We are anx­ious as this (peace) could dis­ap­pear any­time but the po­lice didn’t give up on us. They proved we could trust them.”

How­ev­er, some res­i­dents open­ly ex­pressed con­cerns which pri­mar­i­ly cen­tred around crime.

Want­i­ng to ed­u­cate those present on just how gang ac­tiv­i­ties and ex­tor­tion at­tempts of­ten man­i­fest, the res­i­dents heard from W/Cpl Sasha Williams-God­dard who is as­signed to the St Joseph Po­lice Youth Club. She ac­knowl­edged the com­mu­ni­ty had been deal­ing with the un­savoury as­pects of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty for sev­er­al years.

She called on res­i­dents to speak out, even anony­mous­ly, to re­port where the drugs and guns were hid­den and who were the crim­i­nals in the area bul­ly­ing res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers.

“Stay­ing silent is not the an­swer.”

Williams-God­dard warned those present that to know who the of­fend­ers were and to re­main silent, was akin to em­pow­er­ing these same peo­ple to con­tin­ue their crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

Even as res­i­dents shied away from want­i­ng to com­mu­ni­cate with of­fi­cers at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion as they al­leged cor­rup­tion, Williams-God­dard said there had been a shake-up in the hi­er­ar­chy head­ing the Di­vi­sion.

She as­sured those at the helm were in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing from the res­i­dents as to what was hap­pen­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty. She added some of­fi­cers were hard-work­ing, ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing the law.

Williams-God­dard al­so sought to ed­u­cate at­ten­dees on the var­i­ous forms of gang in­tim­i­da­tion and bul­ly­ing among adults and how it had been creep­ing in­to sec­ondary schools. She pro­vid­ed alarm­ing sta­tis­tics as she claimed boys as young as eight and nine, were be­ing re­cruit­ed and ini­ti­at­ed in­to gangs.

The of­fi­cer re­peat­ed­ly en­cour­aged res­i­dents to part­ner with the po­lice to fight the grow­ing gang cul­ture in T&T.

“Let us do what we can do.”

Wednes­day’s meet­ing, which was host­ed un­der the am­bit of the Hand In Hand Ini­tia­tive, is a con­tin­u­a­tion of ef­forts by of­fi­cers since 2023 to im­prove the area and build com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions.

Ger­ard Coutain ex­plained, “What we are do­ing is iden­ti­fy­ing those at risk youth and try­ing to do a holis­tic pro­gramme with them.”

This he said in­clud­ed guid­ing par­ents on prop­er so­cial­i­sa­tion and how they could en­sure their chil­dren con­tributed pos­i­tive­ly to re­build­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 24 and May 20, 2023 – sev­en peo­ple who lived at Train Line, off Warn­er Street, St Au­gus­tine, were killed in gang-style ex­e­cu­tions.

WPC Re­anne Nicholas-Di­az of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion was deeply moved to help re­build the area fol­low­ing the mur­der of Daniel Ri­ley in 2023.

She said of­fi­cers adopt­ed a soft­er side of polic­ing which had seen a trans­for­ma­tion sweep­ing across the area. Ni­h­co­las-Di­az said their five-part plan to re-es­tab­lish peace and sta­bil­i­ty had been yield­ing pos­i­tive re­sults.

In ad­di­tion to Wednes­day’s town hall meet­ing, of­fi­cers have con­duct­ed com­mu­ni­ty walk­a­bouts, nu­mer­ous cloth­ing and food ham­per dri­ves, a free health fair, an area-wide clean-up, in­fra­struc­tur­al re­pairs to bridges and drains and a thank-you cer­e­mo­ny for spon­sors.