Gang warfare on the streets of Enterprise has left residents in the crossfire as they struggle to live as normal a life as possible, even though they are aware that they can become collateral damage among the carnage of the battle for drug turf.
There is mistrust of the police and the perception that many are in the pockets of the drug lords. Some residents have a fatalistic approach; their options are either stay in the community, live, die or leave. This is the story of a young, professional woman and her family making the painful decision whether to stay in the Enterprise community or to escape the escalating violence.
My husband and I started to build our home in Enterprise, Chaguanas, in 2013. I moved into the neighbourhood in 2015. Even then, we knew that the area was a hotspot but the crime wasn’t the way that it is now. The very first week I moved into Enterprise was the first time I ever heard a gun being fired. It sounded like firecrackers or fireworks. My husband told me you have to duck down, peep through the window and take off all the lights. I didn’t understand it because I was not born or raised in it. I, coming from outside, have followed my husband to this community and I am now learning what it is.
I came from a gated community, this was all new to me. I asked my husband what was it’s like growing up in Enterprise, if it was always this way. He told me when he was seven years old there was a shooting involving Robocop, it was alleged that Robocop shot someone who was trying to rival his turf.
That was one event that stood out in his mind but after that, there were no murders, shootings or any gang-related incidents that he could remember.
My husband said it wasn’t like the way it is now. When he was growing up there, he had his brothers and sisters and they would go to Lendore Hindu School in the area and they lived nearby.
They could walk freely without fear, but now I can’t even stand in my own front yard. Now I can’t even stand in my own front yard without hearing gunshots and wondering if the person passing by is coming to shoot.
There are good, hard-working people here; doctors, nurses, policemen and businessmen. The streets have little shops and there are working-class people living in my community. We’re not just sitting down there idle, twiddling our thumbs and waiting to be caught in this crossfire that we are being told is gang warfare.
RECENT SHOOTINGS, POLICE SEEM AFRAID
On the night Sylvan Alexis, Robocop’s older brother was shot on March 24, I had just come home from work and was playing with my children in the yard with our pet dogs.
Neighbours were walking in the community, people were in their front yard; we felt comfortable.
One of the pups wandered into the road and a neighbour was walking along the street. Just as he placed the pup in my hands we heard loud explosions and we knew immediately what it was.
The murder of Sylvan Alexis, Marvin Allan, Patrick Isles and Dillon ‘Fox’ Grant prompted me to move out. I have taken a hiatus from the community and I have taken my children to my parents’ home. We are staying out until we hear that it is a little bit safe to come back.
These shootings are taking place in front the police. These men have to pass police posts in their vehicle on the street to get to where they are going to shoot people. It seems almost comical like you could just tell the police ‘good evening, I’m just going to kill a man there an I’ll be back.’ It is so blatant.
They are cutting through tracks to escape. To get to the scene of the recent killing takes the police 30 seconds, the killing happened a mere 100 feet away from the police post on John Street, but no one is held.
It is unbelievable that someone came pass the police and shoot Sylvan Alexis because the police are right there. That is also frightening because it brings into question what quality of Police Service we have if you could be posted 100 feet away from a shooting scene and they get away scot-free.
A LOT OF SINGLE PARENTS
The police seem afraid because they sit in their cars wherever they’re posted in Enterprise or drive by. I do not see them asking residents questions. I don’t see them coming out of their vehicles and looking for perpetrators of crime. They’re just driving by with their windows up as if trying to tick a list off something to do.
There are known elements within the Police Service that are protecting these gangs. You can’t prove it but it is known because there is an operation existing on Bhagaloo Extension Street in Enterprise, it is a drug block that has been there for the past 35-plus years.
What we can deduce from that situation is that because the drug lord had been running that block for so long, he was not a positive role model in the community for the young men to look up to.
There is a breakdown in family life. There’s no father figure, a lot of single-parent homes, a mother who is working two jobs to try and bring home enough money to send them to school to give them things to eat.
THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-NOTS
It’s all a matter of the haves and have-nots; the have-nots want what the haves have and the haves don’t want to give them.
My husband believes that the boys are “hungry”; they don’t have jobs to feed their families, they’re procreating, have children to mind and they have no money to provide for them and there is a need and no source for it.
But what is also part of the problem is that they don’t want to work. All they want to do is just go and work for two hours, collect a full day’s pay but come on the block and sit down and lime, but that is the culture of T&T.
Most of them wouldn’t be able to pass a drug test. There are cracks in our borders that are allowing the drugs to come in that’s why they have something to sell. If we were able to seal the cracks in our borders and intercept the drugs then they would have nothing to sell and there will be no drug block.
It is a whole cycle, some police officers are being paid by the drug lord for protection, the police officers need the money that the drug lord is giving them because they’re not getting a large enough salary to support their lifestyle.
A police officer may want to send their children to private schools which may cost $18,000 minimum a year, plus groceries that’s why they are enticed by the drug lord to pay them to make sure the area is clear.
ENTERPRISE POLICE STATION NOT MAKING SENSE
National Security Minister Edmund Dillon announcing plans to build a police station in Enterprise is a complete joke. That is an insult to residents because we think nothing is going to happen.
If I pick up myself to go to the Chaguanas Police Station and say I am here to make a report for you to investigate the drug block on Bhagaloo Extension Street, I am 100 per cent sure I will not live past the night because everyone knows about the drug block and nothing will come out of that report.
It may take me and 3,000 protesters in front the police station, the Prime Minister’s residence, Parliament, shutting down the roads in the country to let them know that we are fed up of this.
We want a clean community, you all come and do what is right to take these elements out of here because we cannot do it. If we speak out against elements we will be killed and eliminated to keep silent and send a message.
Continuing next week—Find out how a single mom from Enterprise used hard work and licks to keep her sons on the straight and narrow path.
