Morvant residents sceptical about revised ZOSO bill

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Res­i­dents in sev­er­al Mor­vant com­mu­ni­ties say they are not op­posed to the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs), but re­main scep­ti­cal about the re­sults the ini­tia­tive can achieve, ar­gu­ing that years of promised crime-fight­ing mea­sures have failed to make their com­mu­ni­ties safer.

A re­vised ver­sion of the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill 2026 in­cludes sev­er­al new pro­vi­sions, among them a two-year sun­set clause, spe­cialised polic­ing dis­tricts cov­er­ing the en­tire coun­try, the pow­er for the Pres­i­dent to de­clare closed ar­eas and cur­fews with­in des­ig­nat­ed zones, and a re­quire­ment for of­fi­cers as­signed to these dis­tricts to wear body cam­eras where avail­able.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed sev­er­al Mor­vant neigh­bour­hoods, where four mur­ders were record­ed with­in a 48-hour pe­ri­od last week.

In Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, where three of the killings oc­curred in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents, one res­i­dent, a re­tired post­man who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as An­tho­ny, said he be­lieved ZOSOs could help im­prove se­cu­ri­ty if im­ple­ment­ed re­spon­si­bly.

An­tho­ny, who de­liv­ered mail in his com­mu­ni­ty and parts of Laven­tille for 40 years, de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as “worth a try,” not­ing that a strong sense of com­mu­ni­ty still ex­ist­ed among law-abid­ing res­i­dents.

“I think it could still be a good idea. Any­time the po­lice are work­ing, I won’t say no to that.

“I’m not op­posed to that.”

An­tho­ny said a more tar­get­ed and con­sis­tent po­lice pres­ence would help ex­pand se­cu­ri­ty cov­er­age and re­duce re­sponse times.

“It’s some­thing that a lot of peo­ple would want to feel more com­fort­able. I have no prob­lem with it, es­pe­cial­ly now.”

He added that al­though he un­der­stood the fear and un­cer­tain­ty many res­i­dents felt, he per­son­al­ly did not feel threat­ened be­cause of his long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ships with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I walked this route for years and I know every­one, from when a lot of them were small chil­dren right up to adult­hood.

“I know it could be dan­ger­ous, but I don’t feel afraid. Every­thing is cool with me.”

How­ev­er, an­oth­er Sec­ond Cale­do­nia res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said he was unim­pressed by the pro­pos­al, ar­gu­ing that it sound­ed sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives such as Op­er­a­tion Ana­con­da in the ear­ly 2000s.

“I hear peo­ple talk­ing about the ZOSO and, to me, I haven’t heard any­thing dif­fer­ent from what was done be­fore.

“They say they can in­tro­duce a cur­few de­pend­ing on how bad things get, and that might make a dif­fer­ence, but won’t they even­tu­al­ly have to lift the cur­few? Then will we just be wait­ing for the next per­son to die?”

The res­i­dent, who said he is a re­tired sol­dier and has lived in the area since 1990, al­so ques­tioned Clause 13 of the Bill, which al­lows the Head of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions to es­tab­lish a cor­don or “closed area” to as­sist in ap­pre­hend­ing crim­i­nals. While he ac­knowl­edged the mea­sure could be use­ful, he ar­gued that Mor­vant’s ge­og­ra­phy would make en­force­ment chal­leng­ing.

“There are so many roads, tracks and val­leys all up and down these hills, and not all of them are paved.

“For years the po­lice have been chas­ing peo­ple through these al­leys and tracks. You could chase some­one down through St Fran­cois Val­ley and end up in Bel­mont. On the east­ern side, you could fol­low some­one and end up in Mal­ick. Then you could be chas­ing some­body through Mor­vant Old Road and end up some­where in Laven­tille. So I don’t see how they will man­age all of that, in­clud­ing traf­fic, if they re­al­ly need to lock down an area.”

Un­der the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, Mor­vant, Diego Mar­tin, Port of Spain, Laven­tille and San Juan would com­prise Dis­trict One of the new polic­ing frame­work.

But an­oth­er life­long Mor­vant res­i­dent, 61-year-old Leroy Ben­nett, said he be­lieved the large-scale de­ploy­ment of po­lice en­vi­sioned un­der the ZOSO strat­e­gy was un­nec­es­sary.

“It’s a waste of time be­cause they aren’t un­der­stand­ing what they’re do­ing.

“If you want to de­ter crime, all you need is one po­lice van dri­ving through every hour and every­thing will be qui­et. You don’t need all these posts and check­points they want to put up.”

Ben­nett nev­er­the­less ac­knowl­edged that the re­cent vi­o­lence in Mor­vant was trou­bling. He said the clus­ter of mur­ders in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia had left many res­i­dents un­easy and re­called hear­ing gun­fire from his home on sev­er­al nights.

For that rea­son, he urged au­thor­i­ties to con­sult res­i­dents be­fore mak­ing a fi­nal de­ci­sion on the leg­is­la­tion.

Mean­while, a Mon Re­pos res­i­dent, who al­so re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, ex­pressed cau­tious op­ti­mism that the ZOSO strat­e­gy could ad­dress some as­pects of crime. While stop­ping short of ful­ly en­dors­ing the pro­pos­al, he wel­comed the re­quire­ment for of­fi­cers as­signed to ZOSOs to wear body cam­eras.

The res­i­dent, who claimed he had pre­vi­ous­ly been pro­filed and sub­ject­ed to po­lice bru­tal­i­ty, said the pro­vi­sion would of­fer greater pro­tec­tion for cit­i­zens.

“That’s a re­al­ly good fea­ture be­cause a lot of things hap­pen that should be cap­tured on a body cam­era. I’ve been hear­ing about body cam­eras for years and they still haven’t been ful­ly in­tro­duced.

“There are a lot of things some po­lice of­fi­cers do that shouldn’t be hap­pen­ing. Body cam­eras would help be­cause you can’t tell me you want to rough up peo­ple like me be­cause we have cane rows, wear a gold chain or a pair of Clarks.”

How­ev­er, he main­tained that crime was dri­ven by deep­er so­cial and eco­nom­ic prob­lems that could not be solved through polic­ing alone, point­ing to his own strug­gles to find em­ploy­ment.

“I can’t say it won’t work. At the end of the day, see­ing is be­liev­ing, but we need more than a ZOSO.

“I have all my qual­i­fi­ca­tions and I still can’t find a job. A ZOSO can’t help me with that.”

The res­i­dent said the Gov­ern­ment must ad­dress broad­er so­ci­etal is­sues if it hopes to re­duce crime over the long term.