Alexander says ZOSO could have prevented recent murders

Shane Su­perville

Fol­low­ing the week­end killings of three peo­ple, in­clud­ing two in his Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said he is not sat­is­fied with the cur­rent mur­der rate.

Alexan­der said the gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) strat­e­gy could have re­duced vi­o­lent crime and po­ten­tial­ly pre­vent­ed some of the re­cent mur­ders. On Sat­ur­day, Cur­tis “Bird” Pierre was shot out­side a Val­sayn food strip restau­rant, while Je­sus Sergeant and Kyle Alexan­der were killed hours lat­er on El Do­ra­do Road in Tu­na­puna.

“I am in no way sat­is­fied, but I know the po­lice ser­vice are do­ing their best,” he said, not­ing bud­get con­straints in­her­it­ed from pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions. He al­so crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion for not sup­port­ing the ZOSO bill in Par­lia­ment.

Alexan­der said ZOSO is de­signed not on­ly to pre­vent vi­o­lence but al­so to pro­vide so­cial sup­port, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al and em­ploy­ment as­sis­tance, to com­mu­ni­ties that oth­er­wise have lim­it­ed ac­cess to such ser­vices.

He de­scribed the killings in his con­stituen­cy as par­tic­u­lar­ly sad­den­ing and urged law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to avoid con­tact with friends or rel­a­tives sus­pect­ed of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, warn­ing that mere as­so­ci­a­tion could put them at risk.