Shas­tri Boodan

Res­i­dents of Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas and en­vi­rons are de­mand­ing that po­lice do more to re­duce the in­creas­ing crime in the area.

Dur­ing a town meet­ing with se­nior of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion on Wednes­day night at the Sig­na­ture Hall, Mon­trose, res­i­dents said all they get from po­lice are ex­cus­es in­stead of ac­tion.

How­ev­er, Al­lan Fer­gu­son, a res­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty and head of the Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, said the po­lice do not de­serve all the blame. He called on peo­ple not to turn a blind eye to crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Adam Ho­sein, a busi­ness­man in the area, mean­while said there are no work­ing phones at the Long­denville Po­lice Post.

He claimed that last week Thurs­day when Dar­ryl Din­di­al was mur­dered out­side this busi­ness place, the E 999 ser­vice was not work­ing.

Re­call­ing the in­ci­dent, Ho­sein said af­ter Din­di­al was shot he called his fa­ther Tony Ho­sein and E999.

“On­ly to hear you have reached emer­gency 999, please hold. For 20 min­utes,” he said.

Ho­sein al­so claimed there was no sup­port from the po­lice at that time and the res­i­dents had to car­ry Din­di­al to the near­by Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre, where he died.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Kurt Si­mon said the non-work­ing phone at the Long­denville Po­lice Post was out of the re­mit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Si­mon said, “The Long­denville phone sit­u­a­tion is a sit­u­a­tion ex­ist­ing for the longest while. We are try­ing to have that rec­ti­fied with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty who is not the TTPS. The TTPS do not in­stall phones, we do not put up phone wires.”

Si­mon called on mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty to look in­wards.

Attendees at the TTPS town meeting on Wednesday.

Shastri Boodan

He said, “The pub­lic do not want to hear the po­lice say­ing to them that you have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty too. When a po­lice of­fi­cer is bribed, usu­al­ly it is not an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer brib­ing him. When a po­lice of­fi­cer is in a rum shop drink­ing free rum, usu­al­ly it is not a po­lice of­fi­cer own­ing the rum shop and giv­ing him free rum so that you could have him there in your pres­ence for some sort of free se­cu­ri­ty.

“When a po­lice of­fi­cer comes to a busi­ness to buy, but the busi­ness­man re­fus­es to ac­cept his mon­ey and don’t tell me no, be­cause it hap­pened to me and I said, look take your mon­ey I’m pay­ing and that is why I can’t say I bought any­thing in Cen­tral be­cause I don’t want any­body giv­ing me any­thing free.”

He added, “But there is civ­il re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and you will say what does that have to do with crime. Per­haps noth­ing, but per­haps a whole lot be­cause if we, in our own selves, are pre­pared to be so small-mind­ed to try to cap­ti­vate us, then what else are we do­ing. When we are try­ing to cap­ti­vate the po­lice, are we try­ing to hide some­thing we are do­ing. Yes, you can make noise, we can re­spond too, we are re­spond­ing, I have heard you all and you have blamed us, you have blamed us for the rob­beries, you have blamed us for the mur­ders, you have blamed us for our tele­phone line, you have blamed us for the amount of per­sons who are po­lice of­fi­cers.”

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Sunil Moonasar lat­er asked that Si­mon con­tin­ue and tell the pub­lic what are the so­lu­tions.

Si­mon said the TTPS has launched its 2022/2024 strate­gic ac­tion plan.

He said the plan has five main pil­lars that in­volve tech­nol­o­gy, hu­man well­ness, pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment of the po­lice and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.

He said the “ac­tion items” in­clude out­reach in the form of town meet­ings, youth clubs and walk­a­bouts, adding in­creased train­ing would give the po­lice the added edge in crime-solv­ing.

Si­mon said the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion is go­ing through changes re­gard­ing its in­ves­tiga­tive process­es. He said the di­vi­sion has now es­tab­lished a ca­pa­ble gang unit that gath­ers in­tel­li­gence in the di­vi­sion and an ac­tive com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing unit that tar­gets at-risk groups, es­pe­cial­ly per­sons liv­ing in trou­bled house­holds. Po­lice will al­so be li­ais­ing with re­gion­al bod­ies to re­duce hid­ing spots for crim­i­nals.

Si­mon said, “Po­lice are step­ping out of our tra­di­tion­al role and en­ter­ing in­to roles of so­cial work, try­ing to en­cour­age the dif­fer­ent agen­cies that can part­ner with us.”

SEE AL­SO: Can­dle­light vig­il for mur­dered Mon­trose busi­ness­man, calls for more pa­trols

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