Carisa Lee

Af­ter the brazen day­light killings and wound­ings in Port-of-Spain last month, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South, Kei­th Scot­land, says that a plan to curb crime in the cap­i­tal has been for­mu­lat­ed and set in mo­tion.

“I spoke with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty as of last night,” he said on Tues­day.

Scot­land said the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween him and Fitzger­ald Hinds on Mon­day fo­cused on how to ar­rest the sit­u­a­tion and be proac­tive, as the re­cent scourge of crime in the cap­i­tal was a cause for con­cern.

How­ev­er, he could not give de­tails.

“I am get­ting the sup­port from the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to make Port-of-Spain a safe place,” Scot­land said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at Cin­e­maONE IMAX at One Wood­brook Place on Tues­day, where Scot­land treat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 chil­dren from his con­stituen­cy to a movie and a treat, the MP plead­ed with the young men of his con­stituen­cy to choose an­oth­er path in their lives.

“There is no com­ing back in this life af­ter death, I would tell the young men to live, life is not just killing, life is work­ing hard and reap­ing the re­wards,” he said.

Last Fri­day, one man was killed and three oth­ers in­jured on the cor­ner of George and Queen Street dur­ing the af­ter­noon rush hour.

Two weeks be­fore, a wa­ter ven­dor was mur­dered just af­ter mid­day on Broad­way, Port-of-Spain and Ian “Tin Man” Stan­ley was shot dead on Wright­son Road, near the Break­fast Shed, in April.

To help al­le­vi­ate such crimes, Scot­land said in­tel­li­gence led them to start con­struc­tion on a Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Post at Adam Smith Square, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook.

But the MP said noth­ing will be done with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the res­i­dents.

“We are en­gag­ing the res­i­dents, there are eight res­i­dents on that stretch…I have spo­ken with all of them and we are work­ing on it to see what the so­lu­tion can be,” he said.

Scot­land said he was elect­ed to make sug­ges­tions and the project, which cost $15 mil­lion in phase one, is to en­sure that there is a heav­ier pres­ence of city po­lice in the cap­i­tal city.

There were con­cerns from res­i­dents about the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion be­ing close to the po­lice post, but Scot­land said the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Post will have a dif­fer­ent func­tion than the TTPS.

He al­so added that the green space is some­thing they are keep­ing in mind.

“The view of the res­i­dents will not be dis­card­ed,” he said.