An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Mem­bers of the pub­lic, road­side ven­dors, and busi­ness own­ers wel­comed a po­lice walk­a­bout in San Juan on Fri­day, but many ex­pressed scep­ti­cism that in­creased vis­i­bil­i­ty alone would curb the cur­rent crime surge.

As se­nior of­fi­cers—led by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Op­er­a­tions Suzette Mar­tin—vis­it­ed busi­ness­es in­clud­ing KFC and Crown Phar­ma­cy in the San Juan Croisee, some cus­tomers ad­mit­ted they re­mained anx­ious with the Christ­mas sea­son ap­proach­ing.

De­spite re­peat­ed as­sur­ances from both the po­lice and the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SJ­BA) that en­hanced mea­sures were in place to boost com­fort and se­cu­ri­ty in the dis­trict ahead of Christ­mas and Car­ni­val, at least one busi­ness own­er was un­con­vinced.

“It tough and rough right now,” he said, de­clin­ing to have his name pub­lished. “It could be a very gloomy Christ­mas.”

He said cus­tomers had be­come in­creas­ing­ly hes­i­tant to vis­it his Croisee shop out of fear of rob­beries or oth­er crimes, and re­cent sales re­flect­ed that trend. He added that his on­line busi­ness had grown as cus­tomers pre­ferred what they felt was a safer al­ter­na­tive to vis­it­ing high-risk ar­eas.

Mar­tin, the Gold Com­man­der for the TTPS Christ­mas Crime Plan 2025 and Car­ni­val Crime Plan 2026, stood along­side oth­er se­nior di­vi­sion­al heads as they out­lined their safe­ty strate­gies at the An­tho­ny Roberts Prom­e­nade.

“Our mis­sion to­day is clear: to strength­en pub­lic safe­ty, sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, and pro­vide a vis­i­ble polic­ing pres­ence through­out the Christ­mas and pre-Car­ni­val pe­ri­ods,” she said.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that the North East­ern Di­vi­sion (NED) is one of the coun­try’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, Mar­tin said in­creased foot and mo­bile pa­trols were al­ready ac­tive and that res­i­dents could ex­pect faster re­sponse times.

She warned that the po­lice had launched a full of­fen­sive tar­get­ing gang-linked of­fend­ers us­ing in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions. Of­fi­cers would al­so fo­cus on traf­fic man­age­ment, road safe­ty, and pub­lic or­der.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the NED, Claire Guy-Al­leyne, added her as­sur­ances.

“As we ap­proach the fes­tive sea­son, I want to as­sure men, women, chil­dren—even our an­i­mals—that we in the NED are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing our com­mu­ni­ties re­main safe and se­cure,” she said.

She promised in­creased pa­trols in high-traf­fic ar­eas and clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers to iden­ti­fy and pre­vent po­ten­tial hotspots.

Speak­ing di­rect­ly to the young peo­ple present, she added, “We be­lieve in you. We want you to reach your full po­ten­tial. We want to sup­port you in mak­ing pos­i­tive choic­es and avoid­ing the pit­falls of crime.”

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Rishi Singh said of­fi­cers were mind­ful of the unique needs and ter­rain of each com­mu­ni­ty in the di­vi­sion.

“We took the time to analyse the ter­rain and im­ple­ment mod­i­fi­ca­tions to meet the spe­cif­ic needs at this time,” he said.

With com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty ex­pect­ed to surge, Singh not­ed that “safe­ty will dri­ve the com­fort of the com­mer­cial space—but mea­gre times will al­so act as root caus­es for oth­er types of ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Reaf­firm­ing their sup­port for im­prov­ing and ex­pand­ing the San Juan busi­ness dis­trict were re-elect­ed SJ­BA pres­i­dent Abra­ham Ali, Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Chris­t­ian Birch­wood, and San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Richard Wal­cott.