Yvonne Webb

Traf­fic war­dens in San Fer­nan­do told Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er their lives were in dan­ger from the pub­lic and they need­ed po­lice pro­tec­tion while per­form­ing their du­ties.One of­fi­cer told the min­is­ter, who vis­it­ed them yes­ter­day, they are not on­ly re­ferred to as "Jack Warn­er's po­lice", but they are cursed and abused and a mo­torist "even come out of his car and pulled a cut­lass on us."

The of­fi­cer said most mo­torists are abu­sive. He sug­gest­ed that might be be­cause war­dens were not armed.The com­ments came even as Warn­er ob­served that traf­fic po­lice of­fi­cers seemed to have sur­ren­dered their posts to traf­fic war­dens.Dur­ing an ear­li­er tour of Princes Town to view the traf­fic con­ges­tion and come up with so­lu­tions, Warn­er com­ment­ed about the ab­sence of po­lice of­fi­cers on the streets.

"I would like to be­lieve that traf­fic war­dens came to com­ple­ment the po­lice, not re­place them, but it seems there are no po­lice of­fi­cers here," he said.The min­is­ter said he would write to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy, not on­ly about the ab­sence of po­lice of­fi­cers di­rect­ing traf­fic on the streets, but how they were break­ing the law.

He added: "I saw po­lice break­ing the laws of the coun­try. I am talk­ing about the cross­walk where I have seen po­lice ve­hi­cles be­ing parked, park­ing their ve­hi­cles less than ten feet from the cor­ner, talk­ing on their cell­phones."He said the po­lice of­fi­cers were sup­posed to set an ex­am­ple and if they did not be­have and ob­serve the law, oth­ers would fol­low suit.

Warn­er said the com­plaint from the war­den un­der­scores the need for a po­lice pres­ence be­cause traf­fic con­ges­tion was mak­ing dri­vers an­gry.He told the of­fi­cer who com­plained about be­ing called "Jack Warn­er po­lice", not to get an­gry, but to ex­press pride."I was a SRP once," Warn­er re­called, say­ing he was re­ferred to "as some­thing re­sem­bling po­lice" but he was a proud SRP.

Chief traf­fic war­den, Ran­dolph Pro­tain, told Warn­er there were not enough war­dens to prop­er­ly man­age the traf­fic con­ges­tion. Warn­er as­sured he would take a note to Cab­i­net for an in­cre­men­tal in­crease in man­pow­er.He said: "Every­where the cry is the same, un­der-strength. They can­not per­form ad­e­quate­ly if they are un­der strength."

The min­is­ter said one of the great­est prob­lem was en­force­ment of the laws."Half of the prob­lem is en­force­ment. If we en­force the law, half of the prob­lems will stop," he said.