SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Res­i­dents of Dow Vil­lage, Cal­i­for­nia, say they want po­lice to start tak­ing crime se­ri­ous­ly in their com­mu­ni­ty.

The vil­lagers made the de­c­la­ra­tion at a meet­ing with Po­lice Ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives, along with the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South, Rudranath In­dars­ingh MP, at the Dow Vil­lage Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre, on Wednes­day 11 May 2022.

MP In­dars­ingh re­port­ed to the gath­er­ing that he has re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls, mes­sages and videos re­lat­ed to the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties at Dow Vil­lage.

"Per­sons have shown me videos of per­pe­tra­tors jump­ing in­to their homes, TSTT ca­ble cut­ting and a num­ber of home in­va­sions and rob­beries," the Cou­va South MP re­vealed.

He said res­i­dents have com­plained about a high lev­el of noise pol­lu­tion em­a­nat­ing from bars and rum shops in the area.

"They have been say­ing that re­ports are be­ing made to the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion and to the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion, but no help or as­sis­tance is com­ing,” MP In­dars­ingh said.  “Con­stituents have been telling me that at these wa­ter­ing holes, they see po­lice ve­hi­cles parked up for very ex­ten­sive pe­ri­ods of time."

The Cou­va South MP al­so stat­ed that con­stituents be­lieve the po­lice are get­ting mon­ey from bar own­ers to turn a blind eye. He ar­gues that the Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee should send a strong mes­sage to bar own­ers when it comes to re­newals.

"Bar own­ers need to be re­spon­si­ble and not un­leash this lev­el of ar­ro­gance to the com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

MP In­dars­ingh said the res­i­dents al­so are call­ing for pa­trols near places of wor­ship since ban­dits are now rob­bing re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions.

The Po­lice Ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives promised reg­u­lar pa­trols to deal with delin­quent of­fi­cers who are park­ing of­fi­cial po­lice ve­hi­cles out­side of bars.: In ad­di­tion, they called up­on the con­stituents to write to the Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee and state their ob­jec­tions to the re­new­al of bars who show no em­pa­thy on the noise pol­lu­tion is­sue.