Kevon Felmine

Con­tin­u­ing woes at the La Brea Po­lice Post on Thurs­day, prompt­ed pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Sargeant Anand Rame­sar to call on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to step down. Speak­ing via tele­phone, Rame­sar made the req­ui­si­tion as he com­ment­ed on the dis­cov­ery of a four-foot long snake at the po­lice post. Rame­sar said: "It is clear that this could nev­er be 21st cen­tu­ry polic­ing. It could nev­er be the way for­ward in terms of pro­vid­ing a prop­er work­ing en­vi­ron­ment for po­lice of­fi­cers. The La Brea po­lice fa­cil­i­ty is a typ­i­cal ex­am­ple of the fail­ure of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and his ex­ec­u­tive to deal with mat­ters of wel­fare and the well be­ing and safe­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers.

This fail­ure on the part of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is be­com­ing too ram­pant. Af­ter one year in of­fice and with this lev­el of fail­ure, the time has come for a change in lead­er­ship." Rame­sar said the con­di­tion at the La Brea Po­lice Post was go­ing from bad to worse. He ex­plained that the po­lice sta­tion in the area had be­come di­lap­i­dat­ed with a leak­ing roof and un­sta­ble floor­ing, forc­ing them to re­lo­cate to an­oth­er area. How­ev­er, a faulty sew­er at that lo­ca­tion called them to move to their present lo­ca­tion. The Sun­day Guardian was told that around 6.30 am, a fe­male cus­to­di­an of the sta­tion was clean­ing when she came up­on the brown and black maca­juel snake be­hind a fil­ing cab­i­net.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning and En­vi­ron­ment's Forestry Di­vi­sion was con­tact­ed and one hour lat­er, game war­dens re­moved the snake and took it to the Wildlife Cen­tre at Farm Road, St Joseph, where da­ta will be tak­en be­fore it is re­leased in­to the wild. Of­fi­cers at the post are now call­ing on the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to com­plete works on the orig­i­nal premis­es. One of­fi­cer ex­plained: "This used to be the Old Re­pub­lic Bank build­ing which the min­istry had been rent­ing since 2008. Their in­ten­tion was to ren­o­vate the old sta­tion and they had start­ed but works have stopped since."