Maloney residents make frustration clear at TTPS meeting

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

De­spite re­as­sur­ances from se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers that peo­ple seek­ing to leave Mal­oney dur­ing cur­few hours for le­git­i­mate rea­sons would be al­lowed to do so, sev­er­al res­i­dents voiced their con­cerns and ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion dur­ing a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice com­mu­ni­ty sen­si­ti­sa­tion meet­ing last night.

The meet­ing, held at the Mal­oney In­door Sport­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, be­gan just af­ter 7 pm and was in­tend­ed to raise aware­ness of the in­tro­duc­tion of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion Act with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and how res­i­dents could ap­ply for per­mits to leave the des­ig­nat­ed closed area.

But be­fore the meet­ing be­gan, is­sues with the roll­out of the SOA were vis­i­ble, as heavy traf­fic along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way was ob­served from as far west as El So­cor­ro, San Juan.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, com­plaints were al­so raised, with one res­i­dent, Ab­bi­gale Noel, blam­ing the con­ges­tion on res­i­dents try­ing to re­turn to the neigh­bour­hood be­fore the cur­few came in­to ef­fect at 9 pm.

“I feel as though the cur­few be­gan a lit­tle ear­li­er be­cause of the time. It’s a bit frus­trat­ing when try­ing to get in­to the com­mu­ni­ty, mind you, it’s adding more hours... or less hours to pre­pare for the next day,” Noel told the of­fi­cers host­ing the meet­ing.

“Al­so, the per­mit... how is that per­mit re­al­ly be­ing is­sued? It needs to be clear be­cause we have a lot of el­der­ly in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who did not give her name as she ad­dressed of­fi­cers, al­so sought clar­i­ty on how the per­mits would be is­sued, not­ing she was em­ployed with a fast food fran­chise and her ros­ter was ad­just­ed to pre­vent her from work­ing on the night shift, which she said was more prof­itable for her.

How­ev­er, in re­sponse, head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion North, Snr Supt Aval­on Frank, tried to as­sure res­i­dents the po­lice would work with them to en­sure the cur­few did not sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact law-abid­ing res­i­dents.

“Once we get how your shift op­er­ates, we will put it on the per­mit that this per­son is al­lowed to en­ter and leave be­tween this time and this time. So, we are not pre­vent­ing any­body from go­ing to work,” Frank said.

“The per­mit will not ex­pire un­til the op­er­a­tion is over. You just have to come and let us know what is your area of con­cern, so I don’t know why peo­ple are mak­ing this hu­la­bal­loo that I can’t go here or go there.”

Res­i­dent Hugh Quee­ley told of­fi­cers that he need­ed to leave the neigh­bour­hood three times a week to at­tend a clin­ic and was grant­ed a per­mit on the spot by act­ing ASP Su­san Wilkin­son, who re­viewed his doc­u­ments.

Quee­ley, ac­cord­ing to Snr Supt Frank, was the first per­son to be is­sued a per­mit to leave the closed area since the strat­e­gy was im­ple­ment­ed.

But while Quee­ley was at­tend­ed to, the ques­tions and crit­i­cism con­tin­ued, as an­oth­er res­i­dent al­so ques­tioned the ba­sis of a closed area be­ing de­clared in Mal­oney, specif­i­cal­ly con­tend­ing that oth­er ar­eas were more vi­o­lent by com­par­i­son in re­cent times

“I want to know what are the grounds for a lock­down in Mal­oney af­ter a shoot­ing with no mur­ders when there were two mur­ders in Cou­va... there ain’t lock­down.”

In his re­sponse, act­ing Supt of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, Steve McKen­zie, said the TTPS would fol­low the law and main­tain or­der.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents again voiced their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his re­sponse.

Shouts and crit­i­cism from the crowd con­tin­ued through­out the meet­ing, be­fore Frank paused in be­tween his re­sponse, urg­ing the res­i­dents to tem­per them­selves and al­low the of­fi­cers to re­spond to ques­tions.

“Al­low the of­fi­cers to an­swer if you want to hear the an­swer to the ques­tions.”

The tone of the meet­ing con­tin­ued even as it end­ed by 8.35 pm, as at­ten­dees formed a line to speak with of­fi­cers and ap­ply for their per­mits and re­turn to their re­spec­tive homes be­fore the cur­few took ef­fect.

When leav­ing the venue, sev­er­al po­lice ve­hi­cles were seen con­duct­ing pa­trols in con­voy, while oth­ers were ob­served parked with met­al bar­ri­cades near to the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, as of­fi­cers on foot re­quest­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from peo­ple en­ter­ing the neigh­bour­hood.