Rishard Khan

The Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion’s (EPA) Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices branch sec­re­tary, Re­bec­ca Ranger, says the union has been plead­ing with the com­pa­ny for prop­er ve­hi­cles to do cash tran­sits and bet­ter bul­let­proof vests for of­fi­cers, how­ev­er, re­quests were de­nied.

Ranger was speak­ing to the me­dia yon Tues­day, fol­low­ing Mon­day’s am­bush of col­leagues at Pen­ny­wise Plaza, La Ro­main, which left two of­fi­cers dead and an­oth­er fight­ing for life in hos­pi­tal.

“We have been beg­ging Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty for over sev­en years for prop­er ve­hi­cles to do CIT (cash in tran­sit) pick-ups. Al­lied has not pro­vid­ed that. What they did is con­tin­ue to in­crease in their pick-ups and give us ve­hi­cles that are not suit­able,” she said.

She said she wrote to the Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment to sched­ule a meet­ing to treat is­sues of ve­hi­cle safe­ty and bul­let­proof vests and was yet to re­ceive a re­sponse.

She said she had to go above to the deputy chair­man to dis­cuss the is­sues last month.

“On the 24th of last month, we would have met with the deputy chair con­cern­ing bul­let­proof vests and the ar­gu­ment is the price of the vests and what the com­pa­ny is will­ing to pay for the vests,” she said.

She called on the Gov­ern­ment to en­act leg­is­la­tion for se­cu­ri­ty firms to have prop­er ve­hi­cles and safe­ty equip­ment for all es­tate con­sta­bles.

For­mer branch board chair­man, Cur­tis Cuev­elle said they had been lob­by­ing the com­pa­ny for the ar­moured ve­hi­cles for over sev­en years.

“I think every­body and every child would know that you need that ve­hi­cle to per­form ef­fec­tive­ly and, more so, safe­ly. We are look­ing at bul­let­proof vests dat­ed six or sev­en years ago that of­fi­cers are us­ing,” he said.

The union’s pres­i­dent, Deryck Richard­son, said they an­tic­i­pat­ed the trag­ic end to Mon­day’s at­tack “be­cause we have been com­plain­ing over and over and over about the sit­u­a­tion con­cern­ing the equip­ment, the train­ing and every­thing that is ap­plied to es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers.”

He said these are com­mon is­sues across the in­dus­try.

He re­newed calls for of­fi­cers to ab­stain from con­duct­ing these op­er­a­tions un­til they were pro­vid­ed with the prop­er tools to do the job safe­ly.

How­ev­er, he not­ed, in the past, of­fi­cers dis­obeyed this call be­cause they feared vic­tim­i­sa­tion from their com­pa­nies.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices’ Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer for com­ment but was ad­vised to con­tact the com­pa­ny’s pub­lic re­la­tions de­part­ment on Wednes­day morn­ing for a state­ment.