Carisa Lee

Gang war­fare is the main crime af­fect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty of Care­nage.

This was con­firmed by a se­nior of­fi­cer at­tached to the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion. He said while things re­main qui­et at the mo­ment, there are a few gangs who dis­turb the peace.

“Oth­er than that, more preva­lent of­fences would be on the coast­line, lar­ce­ny boat and en­gines, we get sup­port from the CDA and coastal sup­port unit,” the se­nior of­fi­cer said.

He said oth­er than this, there may be a few crimes of op­por­tu­ni­ty where per­pe­tra­tors would dri­ve through an area and rob peo­ple.

“Peo­ple need to be more aware of their sur­round­ings,” he said.

The of­fi­cer said they have in­creased pa­trols and house search­es to deal with this.

Pop­u­lat­ed with sev­er­al bars, beach­es and a new­ly opened fish fry fa­cil­i­ty, Care­nage had the po­ten­tial to be an en­ter­tain­ment hub.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, res­i­dents say gang war­fare has turned this once fun en­vi­ron­ment in­to a fear­ful one. “I doh re­al­ly come out­side so…it make you stay in­side more to avoid the crime sit­u­a­tion there,” res­i­dent and busi­ness own­er Tesha Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj re­cent­ly opened a mi­ni mart op­po­site the po­lice sta­tion but said even that is not enough pro­tec­tion.

“A lit­tle, noth­ing much but just a lit­tle bit, I still feel a lit­tle pro­tect­ed even though the crime is ridicu­lous,” she said.

A bar own­er, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said the crime caused her to lose many pa­trons. She said some come just to buy but hard­ly any­one sticks around, which has af­fect­ed busi­ness dras­ti­cal­ly.

“Is who pass­ing by will buy, but lim­ing and thing not so much as be­fore be­cause you sit­ting down, gun­shots pass­ing every day, so peo­ple scared for they lives,” she said.

The busi­ness own­er said the crim­i­nals have caused her to open ear­li­er and close ear­li­er.

“Ages 15 to 20 is who com­mit­ting these acts, young peo­ple,” she said.

One L’Anse Mi­tan res­i­dent, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said gang vi­o­lence has tak­en a lot from him and his loved ones.

“It take way friends, it take way fam­i­ly,” he said.

In his opin­ion, Care­nage lacks pos­i­tive in­flu­ences, so the youths fol­low what they see.

“Every­body want but they don’t want to work hard for it...every­thing is bad­ness, it have a boy say­ing ‘aye what you is, a gang­ster, I want to be a gang­ster’. Every­body fol­low­ing the wrong thing,” he said.

The res­i­dent said lack of prop­er par­ent­ing, not just bi­o­log­i­cal but by the vil­lage, was one of the rea­sons why young peo­ple go astray.

“Who you know, know pitch, who you know, know rub­ber bands, or to spin top, I have a top they and I nev­er even show my lil broth­er how to use it be­cause he not in­ter­est­ed…is a fol­low­ing thing,” he said.

Haig Street res­i­dent Mur­phy Ed­wards is al­so wor­ried about the com­mu­ni­ty’s youth.

“I have no­ticed crime has shaped and changed in dif­fer­ent way and age group… it reach to a stage where young peo­ple 12 and 13 get­ting in­to se­ri­ous trou­ble. It get­ting me wor­ried be­cause if this is what go­ing on in our coun­try to­day and com­mu­ni­ty, it wor­ry me be­cause it means that our fu­ture is in trou­ble,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

He said a lack of prop­er par­ent­ing is the main cause of the prob­lem and as part of a church in the com­mu­ni­ty, he has heard many com­plaints from par­ents about their chil­dren choos­ing the wrong path.

“To see the young peo­ple of to­mor­row be­ing mis­led by the el­e­ments of de­struc­tion, pick­ing up guns, knives get­ting in­to school fights…we need to be more stern in our homes as par­ents,” he said.

De­spite this con­cern, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 250 young peo­ple be­tween the ages of 5-29 are reg­is­tered with the Care­nage Po­lice Youth Club. One of the work­ers there said they help with home­work week­ly be­tween 3-5pm and of­fer tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al cours­es. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some slip through the cracks.

While there, Guardian Me­dia found a group of young men un­der a pavil­ion in a field. They told us even with their qual­i­fi­ca­tions, get­ting jobs were dif­fi­cult so some of them who have fam­i­lies to take care of turn to crime.

The group of young men al­so added that be­cause of pover­ty, they failed to keep with any cours­es they pur­sue. They said they have no mon­ey for tools or trans­porta­tion and the stipend some of the cours­es of­fer is not enough to main­tain a fam­i­ly.

“Where they go­ing, some­times they go once, twice and they ain’t get­ting noth­ing. If a child leave school with eight pass­es and cah get a job and a man give them a gun what they go do…par­ents still have to put out mon­ey to send their chil­dren to school, it have no free ed­u­ca­tion,” one man said.

They showed our team the emp­ty field and re­vealed that apart from its de­plorable state (miss­ing lights, dam­aged fence wire and patchy tuft), peo­ple don’t utilise it as much be­cause of crime.

“By 7 pm, Care­nage closed in­no,” one of the men shout­ed.

The group added that ac­tiv­i­ties in those spaces used to bring out peo­ple who would sup­port ven­dors and busi­ness own­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty.

They said to help with em­ploy­ment, Gov­ern­ment can pay the res­i­dents to main­tain the var­i­ous recre­ation­al spaces.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who al­so asked to re­main anony­mous, said from the van­tage point of his house, he sees a lot of drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing tak­ing place along the coastal lines. He at­trib­uted that to the crim­i­nal­i­ty and part­ly blames the Venezue­lan pop­u­la­tion for the vi­o­lent in­flu­ence. But the se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said those re­ports are min­i­mal.

Most of the res­i­dents who spoke to Guardian Me­dia said Care­nage is sal­vage­able if these is­sues are ad­dressed and still de­scribed it as a beau­ti­ful place to live with many good peo­ple.