Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Dins­ley have be­come too care­less, mak­ing them­selves vul­ner­a­ble to home in­va­sions.

This is one point raised by Sergeant Singh of the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion, at the Dins­ley Town Meet­ing to dis­cuss crime on Mon­day night.

Singh, who vol­un­teered to be at the meet­ing, said when res­i­dents be­come too com­fort­able, ob­ser­vant per­pe­tra­tors strike.

“Most of the crime that hap­pens now, with rob­beries and so on, are crimes of op­por­tu­ni­ties. Some­times they just pass, and we as vil­lagers or mem­bers of the pub­lic get too lack­adaisi­cal, we don’t pay at­ten­tion to our sur­round­ings and what we do. Peo­ple get so com­fort­able with their homes, they reach by their homes, park their ve­hi­cles, leave the car door open, and go to open the gate, and so on. Op­por­tu­ni­ties. Once we do our home­work and we pay at­ten­tion to our sur­round­ings, [we can] make our­selves a hard tar­get not a soft tar­get,” he said.

The res­i­dents said there had been an in­crease in crime in Dins­ley, from the re­cent rob­bery of a Chi­nese store to a home in­va­sion of an el­der­ly cou­ple.

There has al­so been an uptick in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the Trinci­ty area.

At the meet­ing, res­i­dents com­plained about a lack of ef­fec­tive re­sponse from the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion.

One res­i­dent, Char­maine, said she was robbed of 25 gas tanks in her house last Thurs­day. When she called the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion, they said they would send some­one, but they nev­er did. She was forced to ac­tu­al­ly go down to the sta­tion and es­cort an of­fi­cer to her home.

Re­spond­ing to these con­cerns, Singh said the Arou­ca branch was un­der­staffed.

“The Arou­ca dis­trict car­ries the same amount of po­lice of­fi­cers from the in­cep­tion of Arou­ca to now. We have a lot of new home de­vel­op­ments, we have a lot of peo­ple do­ing apart­ments, so the pop­u­la­tion has been in­creas­ing dras­ti­cal­ly, and [it’s] the same of­fi­cers with the same re­sources try­ing to as­sist you all in your re­quest,” Singh said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent asked for more pa­trols in the area, to which Singh said that was one area where they did not fall short and added that there was a lim­it to how much pa­trolling could be done.

“I could as­sure you, we do a lot of pa­trols in the Arou­ca dis­trict. You may not see the blue lights all the time, be­cause we may have an un­marked ve­hi­cle do­ing pa­trols. We al­so have foot pa­trols ... We can’t pa­trol 24/7. Of­fi­cers must re­ju­ve­nate, they must re­fresh, and so too does the ve­hi­cle,” he not­ed.

Head of Crime Stop­pers T&T, Darin Carmichael shared tips with the res­i­dents on how to keep an ef­fec­tive neigh­bour­hood watch.

He sug­gest­ed each home buy a blowhorn to alert their neigh­bours in the case of an in­trud­er. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that each fam­i­ly get to know their neigh­bours and who they could trust.

He warned against adding crim­i­nals from the vil­lage to their What­sApp group chat.

He en­cour­aged the res­i­dents to stick to­geth­er to see a change in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I can tell you, every­where that neigh­bour­hood watch groups have been es­tab­lished, much like you have now, crime goes down, be­cause what we have is all of us com­ing to­geth­er now, and trust me, just by this gath­er­ing alone, you are send­ing a very clear mes­sage to all the crim­i­nal el­e­ments or peo­ple who want to be crim­i­nals here in Dins­ley, that we’ve had enough,” he said.

He al­so not­ed that res­i­dents can send tips to Crime Stop­pers via their toll-free hot­line 800-8477 (TIPS) or crimestop­per­stt.com.

Carmichael said the re­ward for ef­fec­tive­ly re­port­ing a crime can be up to TT$10,000.