Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ply­mouth/Black Rock, Kern Alex­is, is wel­com­ing a pro­pos­al for a joint po­lice-army post in Ply­mouth.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has an­nounced the roll­out of 30 posts through­out the coun­try in an ef­fort to en­hance se­cu­ri­ty and re­duce re­sponse times to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk said while no post has been as­signed to To­ba­go, of­fi­cers would wel­come the ini­tia­tive. He added Ply­mouth would be a pre­ferred lo­ca­tion as it over­laps the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Mo­ri­ah and Shir­van Po­lice Sta­tions.

Kirk not­ed that height­ened com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty in the dis­trict makes it an ap­pro­pri­ate site for the post to the im­ple­ment­ed.

In June, a brazen ATM heist on Shel­bourne Street, Ply­mouth, shocked the na­tion as ban­dits used a stolen back­hoe to break in­to an ATM and re­move the vault. Po­lice have charged one sus­pect, Sher­man Irvine, of Black Rock, in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Alex­is said any ef­fort to im­prove the safe­ty of cit­i­zens should be sup­port­ed.

He said, “I would trust the po­lice of­fi­cers’ da­ta, what their re­search has brought to fruition. I wel­come any­thing to make my cit­i­zens safer and if their re­search sug­gests that we should have a post for what­ev­er rea­son, whether ge­o­graph­i­cal or what­ev­er, I wel­come it for the safe­ty of my res­i­dents and my peo­ple.”

Dur­ing a vis­it to Ply­mouth on Thurs­day, many busi­ness own­ers en­dorsed the ini­tia­tive, say­ing it would im­prove se­cu­ri­ty in the area. A hard­ware own­er, who wished to stay anony­mous, said, “It is more than wel­comed. It can come to­mor­row.”

He be­lieves the post would act as a de­ter­rent to il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, but ac­knowl­edged there is a po­ten­tial for abuse of pow­er.

He called for safe­guards to be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure po­lice and army per­son­nel do not use their au­thor­i­ty to set­tle per­son­al grudges.

One veg­etable stall own­er, who was too scared to be pho­tographed or give his name, said sales have been ex­treme­ly slow since the de­com­mis­sion­ing of the ATM.

A woman lim­ing close to where the heist oc­curred ap­pealed for First Cit­i­zens to recom­mis­sion the ATM if a post is es­tab­lished in Ply­mouth. She said with an in­creased pres­ence of law en­force­ment, there would be no con­cerns of the ATM be­ing at­tacked again.

An el­der­ly man, sit­ting near a su­per­mar­ket, said a post would “stop the fool­ish­ness go­ing on in the vicin­i­ty of Ply­mouth.”

He too ap­pealed for a re­turn of the ATM, say­ing he now has to trav­el to Scar­bor­ough to with­draw mon­ey.

De­spite the ATM in­ci­dent, one shop­keep­er be­lieves the re­sources would be bet­ter utilised de­ployed else­where.

“I don’t think it is nec­es­sary. We don’t need a po­lice post. The po­lice go be sit­ting down whole day do­ing noth­ing. Watch to­day, the streets clean. Noth­ing does re­al­ly hap­pen in Ply­mouth,” she said.

She be­lieves the pres­ence of the sol­diers in the vil­lage would in­stil fear among the pub­lic.