An­na-Lisa Paul

With Christ­mas less than one month away and Car­ni­val to fol­low in quick suc­ces­sion, the North East­ern Di­vi­sion (NED) yes­ter­day launched its Christ­mas and Car­ni­val An­ti-Crime Ini­tia­tive as they moved to ramp up crime fight­ing op­er­a­tions.

The of­fi­cers, who are un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Se­nior Supt Win­ston Maraj, will be fo­cus­ing on both the res­i­den­tial and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties in El So­cor­ro and Aranguez in San Juan, as they in­crease pa­trols.

De­tail­ing their lat­est crime plan for the dis­trict at the San Juan Sub-sta­tion on the East­ern Main Road on Thurs­day, In­sp Sunil Bharath out­lined the strate­gies they were im­ple­ment­ing, which he de­scribed as sci­en­tif­ic in na­ture.

He urged res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hoods to unite and form watch groups that could mon­i­tor in­ci­dents and alert oth­ers quick­ly and eas­i­ly in their re­spec­tive ar­eas.

Bharath claimed they had al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced suc­cess with this ef­fort in the Mt Lam­bert com­mu­ni­ty, which had part­nered with the NED and had achieved a de­crease in crime in the area.

Say­ing he want­ed to repli­cate this in oth­er ar­eas, Bharath ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to work with the po­lice.

He urged them to con­tact of­fi­cers once they ob­serve sus­pi­cious per­sons and/or ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place.

In ad­di­tion to in­creased foot and mo­bile pa­trols, he said of­fi­cers are al­so set to in­crease road­blocks in or­der to clamp down on drunk dri­vers and speed­ing mo­torists.

Bharath plead­ed for the pub­lic’s un­der­stand­ing and pa­tience, say­ing: “I am call­ing on per­sons to bear with the po­lice be­cause I know at times that these road­blocks can ap­pear to be a both­er, but it is for the bet­ter­ment of the dis­trict as a whole.”

He added, “It is to en­sure that per­sons are not speed­ing or drink­ing and dri­ving, which can have neg­a­tive im­pacts on the lives and prop­er­ty of third par­ties.”

To those want­i­ng to show off their valu­ables, he warned, “They may not be ac­cus­tomed to the sur­round­ings, so we have im­ple­ment­ed both foot and mo­bile pa­trols in uni­form and plain clothes to have that ex­tra vis­i­bil­i­ty.”

San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts, who was at the event, com­mend­ed the NED for the for­ward-think­ing ini­tia­tive and vowed to as­sist in way pos­si­ble.

He said, “I am pre­pared to give what­ev­er sup­port that is nec­es­sary, and I am hap­py that you’ve called on us and we are def­i­nite­ly go­ing to re­spond.”