Criminals in Paradise: Trench Town apartment residents being terrorised by thieves, beggars

The residents of Paradise Court in Trench Town say they are being terrorised by men in other sections of the community, who they accuse of constantly begging them and even going as far as to rob them. Two women said they are feeling extremely unsafe and are demanding that the perpetrators desist.

“We nah say we better than anyone else, but to know that we move from the other side of the community where we were living free and come here where we are paying bills, and a now we a live inna misery. Mi just want the people dem in Zimbabwe and the other places know that they should stay over their boundaries and leave us alone,” one of them told THE STAR.

Paradise Court is a 252-unit apartment complex built under the Inner City Housing Project in 2007.

“The whole concept of building this complex was to teach and show persons how persons outside the garrison lived orderly. This is where persons paid their bills and mortgages and no graffiti-filled walls and so on. A lot of persons in Arnett Gardens, including myself, welcomed and embraced it. We felt really proud although they are low-income complexes,” she continued.

Similar sentiments were echoed by the other woman, who described the young men as ‘trained’ beggars.

“They will come on the complex and knock on our doors to ‘beg a ting’. It’s not like they are waiting to see us on the street, they come and knock, and I am talking about youths that I have never exchanged words with. A lot of working-class people live on that complex so they think we are rich and tek a piece of set on us,” she said. She accused the complex’s managers of not doing their job as mediators between the National Housing Trust (NHT) and the residents.

Uncooperative tenants

Norman Ayres, Paradise Court’s property manager, said he has not got any recent reports from residents, but admits that they have had issues in the past. He, however, stated that some of the apartment tenants are uncooperative.

“The police at Denham Town Station, from the commanding officer come right down, have walked and toured the entire area. They even had meetings with us and the commander gave everyone his personal number, and it was some of those same residents who said that they are not giving any information to the police. So what do they want me to do?,” he said. ”But what I get to understand is that some of these same residents have friends and children that are involved in these activities. I encourage them to keep their doors closed at all times and some of them don’t listen. As a matter of fact, some of them take off their locks and I am not going to walk behind them and put them back on,” he added.

Ayres even accused some of the residents of defacing their own properties. “When I talked about it, they said I was acting like I lived in Beverly Hills. Even when NHT (representatives) come there and I tell them to speak their minds, nobody want to talk. Some of them don’t even want to sweep the stairway on which they live,” he told THE STAR .