Alexander: Belmont residents wanted ZOSO in community

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says Bel­mont res­i­dents are “high­ly an­noyed” over Thurs­day’s triple mur­ders in the com­mu­ni­ty, be­cause they want­ed a Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) in the area.

Alexan­der made the com­ment in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to queries from Op­po­si­tion MPs Stu­art Young, Kei­th Scot­land and Mar­vin Gon­za­les on crime is­sues fac­ing the coun­try in the wake of the lat­est in­ci­dent in­volv­ing mul­ti­ple mur­ders.

Twen­ty-three-month-old Aki­ni Kafi, his fa­ther Aquil Kafi and fam­i­ly friend An­tho­ny Wil­son were killed af­ter gun­men am­bushed the ve­hi­cle they were in as the tod­dler’s par­ents were tak­ing him to day­care. The tod­dler’s moth­er, An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, re­mains hos­pi­talised.

Asked about safe­ty mea­sures which should have been in ef­fect due to the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), Alexan­der said, “The death of any per­son is of con­cern to this Gov­ern­ment. When these things hap­pen, I tra­verse to the area and have con­ver­sa­tion with per­sons and at this time, they’re high­ly an­noyed be­cause they want­ed what we want­ed to give them—a Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO).”

Young asked why Gov­ern­ment hadn’t im­ple­ment­ed the so­cial side of the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion and re­turned all the youth de­vel­op­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry pro­grammes.

On oth­er as­pects of the Bel­mont mur­ders, Alexan­der not­ed in­creased pa­trols and in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of peo­ple who com­mit­ted the of­fence.

“Per­sons are now hid­ing from law en­force­ment. But every­thing will be done to pro­tect cit­i­zens- even those in Laven­tille, as they call up­on us to rep­re­sent them in a dif­fer­ent type of way.”

Young, not­ing Alexan­der said the same thing on a sim­i­lar ques­tion re­cent­ly, re­it­er­at­ed his query on safe­ty mea­sures un­der the SoE.

Alexan­der prof­fered that Young should have known there are per­sons who are mov­ing out of their con­stituen­cy and in­to oth­er peo­ple’s con­stituen­cies.

“On the morn­ing this (mur­ders) oc­curred, there was a very up­scale op­er­a­tion tak­ing place in the Orop­une po­lice dis­trict and we had to move re­sources from one place to an­oth­er,” he added.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, how­ev­er, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith slammed Alexan­der for politi­cis­ing the is­sue. Not­ing that a SoE was a stronger re­sponse than a ZOSO, he said, “To state that dur­ing a State of Emer­gency, if ZOSO was ap­proved, that it could have pre­vent­ed re­cent mur­ders, is as ridicu­lous a state­ment as you can get. A ZOSO is a vir­tu­al sub­set of a State of Emer­gency (SoE). It pro­vides the same ex­tra law en­force­ment pow­ers and re­moval of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, that you get in a SoE, but on­ly in spe­cif­ic ar­eas.

“In oth­er words, a SoE al­lows for a na­tion­wide ZOSO. If you have a State of Emer­gency, then there is noth­ing stop­ping you from tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic ar­eas to es­tab­lish Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions. In­stead of fin­ger-point­ing and play­ing the blame game, just fo­cus on the mis­sion please.”

Mean­while, on ur­gent mea­sures to im­prove safe­ty in the Ia­cos area fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a mu­ti­lat­ed, head­less body, Alexan­der said he went to Ica­cos on Thurs­day and had a con­ver­sa­tion with sev­er­al peo­ple.

He added, “There have (sic) been an in­tense po­lice op­er­a­tions tak­ing place cur­rent­ly. Ad­di­tion­al pa­trols in­clu­sive of joint pa­trols with oth­er agen­cies and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing from oth­er agen­cies.”

“We’ve al­so asked our friends— who is (sic) hat­ed by many of you —to as­sist in the op­er­a­tions,” he added, de­clin­ing to iden­ti­fy the “friends.”

On im­proved safe­ty mea­sures af­ter the May 4 home in­va­sions in San Juan and St Joseph, Alexan­der said, “Law en­force­ment in­for­ma­tion is that they’re pur­su­ing par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­u­als. We un­der­stand there are per­sons who is (sic) com­ing in from dif­fer­ent ar­eas and per­form­ing these acts. A num­ber of per­sons have been iden­ti­fied. They’re be­ing pur­sued. A num­ber of ini­tia­tives, in­clu­sive of in­tel­li­gence from dif­fer­ent agen­cies, is now part of the op­er­a­tion...”