Feature: Peace finally comes to Laventille

This Guardian photo shows school children on the street as soldiers keep watch

The Guardian newspaper did a reality check on the situation at Laventille and found that people in the community are very happy with the peaceful state these days. According to the paper, people are of the view that if the army and police move out things would change and return to the open gang warfare and daily murders that existed before.

Police statistics show that of the 313 murders this year 81 were in Laventille. However it has been nearly a month since the last murder, which happened on September 9 when a 46-year-old woman was murdered as she slept.

The paper quoted several people who support the idea of a higher security presence.

“It’s a great idea... it has to remain like this...it has not been so peaceful here in years,” were some the sentiments from residents, the paper reported. “The place peaceful now, it have no more gunshots in the night. Last month people could not walk the street at night, now it’s normal,” said another.

The paper said people explained that groups of soldiers make hourly patrols on foot through communities during the night. And they denied claims that soldiers had been hostile to them. 

They also stated that contrary to what some people have been saying the atmosphere is unlike the state of emergency. “Is not like any state of emergency, everybody could walk about in the night. It even safer now than before... they are just doing their job and they here to help us...It's a shame we could not solve this ourselves. We should not have needed politicians to do this,” a resident identified only as Ricky told the Guardian.