More policing needed in communities – radio personality

Hot 97 radio personality Colin “Hitman” Graham, says more policing needs to be carried out in communities to prevent instances of criminal activities.

In an interview with SEARCHLIGHT, following an attempted break-in at his house earlier this week, Graham stated that residents of communities need to feel safe.{{more}}

He related that on Tuesday morning, at about 4 a.m., he and his family were asleep when the incident is said to have taken place.

“The thing about it is that the dog didn’t raise any alarm or anything, but a neighbour who lives just above the road, who moves out early on mornings, saw what happened,” Graham said.

According to Graham, the neighbour told him that he saw a male figure dressed in black attempting to enter the house.

“My sitting room has two access front doors, so he was trying the two of them to get in, but he couldn’t. He was making his way on the side of the verandah to see if he could get another access point and that was when my neighbour shouted out,” Graham said he was told.

He said after the neighbour shouted, the man jumped over the wall and made his getaway on the main road.

“At that point, the neighbour said he noticed that the man appeared to be armed,” he added.

According to Graham, not too long after his ordeal, a woman who lives in the area also said that an individual dressed in a mask was seen in her yard.

He further added that the same description was given of another individual clad in all black, who had attempted to break into a house in the wee hours of the morning, sometime ago.

Graham, who posts frequently on Facebook about ills plaguing society, said he doesn’t believe that the matter was in any way politically motivated.

“It seems to be a happening thing in the community here. Somebody is going around and doing this sort of stuff,” he said.

Graham said seeing that we are in the carnival season, persons need to be mindful that criminals would use this time to take advantage of people.

His solution is the revival of neighbourhood watch programmes.

“We should really start reviving this more. It has to be done in conjunction with the police. It could be a good deterrent. In the instances where you don’t have regular police patrols, since we know they can’t man every community, but at least they can work with persons in the community to do these watches.

“You set it up in such a way that the neighbourhood could have easy access to the police… Just need a little bit more police presence in some communities,” Graham said.

He said his family is still a bit shaken up by the incident, but he just belives that more needs to be done to quell such incidents.

Last year, police assigned two mobile units in the Glen, Calliaqua area, following a series of gun related crimes in those neighbourhoods.(KW)