Alexander: Anti-crime plan includes elements of ZOSO

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish ad­di­tion­al po­lice posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go forms part of a broad­er an­ti-crime strat­e­gy aimed at in­creas­ing law en­force­ment vis­i­bil­i­ty and im­prov­ing pub­lic safe­ty.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia in his Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said the ini­tia­tive is one of sev­er­al mea­sures be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to strength­en com­mu­ni­ties and main­tain re­cent gains in the fight against crime.

“As it re­lates to our an­ti-crime plan, this is one of the strate­gies that we’re about to use to give the pub­lic, give ar­eas, con­stituen­cies, high­ways and by­ways that sense of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty with the pres­ence and vis­i­bil­i­ty of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers any­where you go and in strate­gic lo­ca­tions just in case there is a sit­u­a­tion that aris­es,” Alexan­der said.

He said that el­e­ments of the an­ti-crime plan would draw on the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) frame­work.

“So part of the pro­gramme that you’re see­ing with the con­tain­ers is an in­tro­duc­tion of the ZOSO,” he said.

His com­ments come one day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment will be set­ting up 30 joint po­lice-army posts across the coun­try over the next four months.

She said the ini­tia­tive is in­tend­ed to re­spond to years of re­quests from com­mu­ni­ties for a greater se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence and pro­vide res­i­dents with “a sense of com­fort” while help­ing them re­gain the use of pub­lic spaces.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about why ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were be­ing in­tro­duced de­spite a de­cline in crime, Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment was fo­cused on sus­tain­ing those im­prove­ments rather than be­com­ing com­pla­cent.

Asked if the an­ti-crime plan is an­oth­er form of the failed ZOSO bill, Alexan­der said, “I don’t want to dis­cuss the ZOSO, but what I’m say­ing to you is, in Tu­na­puna, the way I have struc­tured my ap­proach, it is shoul­der­ing with the ZOSO. As I said be­fore, we are think­ing peo­ple; we are so we of­ten find ways to treat with things. We lis­ten to the pub­lic, not those who are mis­chie­vous... We’re not about that. We lis­ten to the mem­bers of the pub­lic who are see­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly so we can guide them and we of­ten take ideas from them. That’s what it is. We are a peo­ple-cen­tred Gov­ern­ment.”

The ZOSO bill was in­tro­duced to curb crime through the use of se­cu­ri­ty for des­ig­nat­ed zones, and al­lowed the Prime Min­is­ter to de­clare zones where there is a threat to the rule of law and pub­lic or­der, en­abling en­hanced po­lice and mil­i­tary pow­ers.

It re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote to pass. While it was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, it failed to pass in the Sen­ate due to a lack of votes from the ma­jor­i­ty of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.