Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Ter­rorised by crim­i­nals and ban­dits who have in­vad­ed six homes in Re­al Spring, Val­sayn South, the com­mu­ni­ty has now set up bar­ri­cades to pro­tect them­selves from crim­i­nal el­e­ments. The bar­ri­cades will be manned by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, Re­al Spring/Val­sayn South Home­own­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Deyals­ingh said the move was a di­rect re­sponse to a spate of crime and home in­va­sions which had made res­i­dents feel un­safe in their homes in re­cent months.

“Since De­cem­ber, ac­tu­al­ly, our com­mu­ni­ty has been un­der­go­ing a se­ries of crime and home in­va­sions that have, you know, every week, some­thing has been hap­pen­ing. And it hap­pens all the time. It’s not just at night. It’s at 5 o’clock in the af­ter­noon, 11 o’clock in the day. We would have had a car just dri­ving through and cer­tain peo­ple just get­ting in­to the area, jump­ing out of the car, and young men with guns com­ing in­to the area,” Deyals­ingh said.

“It reached a lev­el where the com­mu­ni­ty it­self was get­ting dis­tressed. So, we had to make a de­ci­sion, what could we do? And as a com­mu­ni­ty, we re­alised, look, the Gov­ern­ment could on­ly do so much. And the fact is, the Gov­ern­ment has its ini­tia­tives, but we re­alised po­lice can­not be at every cor­ner at every sin­gle time. We re­alised that we would have to see if we could do, you know, our com­mu­ni­ty could as­sist in tak­ing more con­trol in pro­tect­ing our­selves be­cause we found that dai­ly, we wit­nessed a plight of cit­i­zens trau­ma­tised by these home in­va­sions.”

Deyals­ingh said when they looked at the sce­nario, they re­alised the ban­dits had al­so changed their usu­al modus operan­di and were tar­get­ing the com­mu­ni­ty at var­i­ous times of the day.

“The thing is, we found that you know, the gangs are no longer just fight­ing each oth­er over turf pro­tec­tion. It comes like they de­clared war on or­di­nary cit­i­zens be­cause we found the brazen crim­i­nal gangs are now in­vad­ing res­i­dences in broad day­light. So our six home in­va­sions over the last six weeks did cause us to get down to stress. And we had like a self-im­posed cur­few.”

He said even­tu­al­ly, res­i­dents de­cid­ed to stand up and reach out to the Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice with their own crime ini­tia­tives, one of which was the bar­ri­er set up which they felt would pro­vide “our cit­i­zens with an­oth­er blan­ket of se­cu­ri­ty.”

Val­sayn is one of sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties hit by an up­surge in home in­va­sions in re­cent weeks as crim­i­nals moved against what the TTPS likes to call “soft tar­gets” in home­own­ers.

Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh urged oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to come to­geth­er and use ways to fight back against crim­i­nals.

“This is a part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment agen­cies to take back our com­mu­ni­ty. So, I def­i­nite­ly would, but, you know, ask oth­er per­sons to come on board to pro­tect your com­mu­ni­ty, be­cause you can’t con­tin­ue liv­ing in that fear,” he said.

“And you see, it brings that lev­el of to­geth­er­ness in the com­mu­ni­ty. It al­so brings that lev­el of aware­ness and a lev­el where you now could see some­thing and you could reach out, reach out to the agen­cies. Don’t take the law in­to your own hands. Reach out to the agen­cies and let them come on board. So, there­fore, I think this is some­thing that will def­i­nite­ly help us in our fight against crime.”

In fact, res­i­dents of Valasyn North are al­ready fol­low­ing their col­leagues in the south. They penned a let­ter to the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion in Feb­ru­ary al­so seek­ing per­mis­sion to erect bar­ri­ers to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ty.

They are now await­ing the go-ahead from the TPRC.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the ini­tia­tives yes­ter­day, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Kwasi Robin­son said they were hap­py to ac­com­mo­date any mea­sures which would give their burgess­es re­lief from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

“All mem­bers of my re­gion who are try­ing to do some­thing pos­i­tive or try­ing to do some­thing to pro­tect their in­ter­ests, or their stake­hold­er in­ter­ests, we give the sup­port, so it is not that there is no com­bat be­tween the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion grant­i­ng per­mis­sion and the res­i­dents of Val­sayn,” Robin­son said.

“We are work­ing through the is­sues and as soon as those things are com­plet­ed and it could al­ways be done faster, so I’m not say­ing that we can’t do it faster, but as soon as those is­sues are worked through, they will have the sup­port from me, it is ul­ti­mate­ly a coun­cil de­ci­sion.”

Robin­son con­firmed he re­ceived a let­ter from North Val­sayn Park Res­i­dence As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dr Neil Go­sein on the mat­ter and had re­spond­ed, giv­ing them guide­lines for cri­te­ria that need to be met in or­der for them to be able to in­sti­tute bar­ri­cades.

“We are not on two op­po­site sides, so it is not that the Val­sayn com­mu­ni­ty has, no, we are on the same side in this fight and that is the vi­sion that we want to push. There are enough things to di­vide us and peo­ple feel­ing safe in their homes and crime should not be one of them,” the chair­man said.