Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of the once-qui­et Bar­rack­pore com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day ex­pressed mixed views on the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Zones Bill, as con­cerns about rob­beries and home in­va­sions con­tin­ue to grow.

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia that while they be­lieve the crime-fight­ing mea­sure could help re­duce crime, some re­mained more scep­ti­cal.

The pro­posed bill would es­tab­lish a frame­work for spe­cial op­er­a­tions in sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts across Trinidad and To­ba­go. A spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty with­in one of the dis­tricts could sub­se­quent­ly be de­clared a “closed area”, where en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures could in­clude re­stric­tions on en­ter­ing or leav­ing with­out a per­mit, cur­fews and war­rant­less search­es.

“Is a good idea,” said 56-year-old welder Den­nis Mo­hammed as he rode his bi­cy­cle along the main road.

A busi­ness­woman who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty re­called that ear­li­er this week, ban­dits robbed a near­by food es­tab­lish­ment in broad day­light at Cu­mu­to Trace North.

The mi­ni-mart pro­pri­etor said there have been sev­er­al home in­va­sions and rob­beries in the com­mu­ni­ty and that spe­cial op­er­a­tions may help.

“Pro­tec­tion for the neigh­bour­hood, for the vil­lagers, for all of us busi­ness own­ers. I think is a great idea.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that the re­stric­tions, in­clud­ing a cur­few, could af­fect busi­ness­es, she said, “We can ad­just and work with it.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who iden­ti­fied him­self as David, sells snow cones near Kan­hai Road South. He sup­ports the bill.

“Yes, it is a very good idea be­cause you’re not safe any­where right now and you’re be­ing tar­get­ed at your home, at your busi­ness place. So, we need some­thing to be put in place to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion so that you would have a safer en­vi­ron­ment.”

He said an in­creased po­lice pres­ence would de­ter crim­i­nals.

“You’re get­ting a lot of rob­beries, you have home in­va­sions. There’s a lot of things go­ing on.”

Some res­i­dents were more cau­tious and ex­pressed con­cern about po­lice abus­ing their au­thor­i­ty and in­fring­ing on the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens.

While he did not share those con­cerns, David agreed that po­lice of­fi­cers should wear body cam­eras at all times.

“Be­cause some­times you go out­side, there may be a shootout, an ex­change of gun­fire out there, and there’s no ev­i­dence to show or prove that the po­lice was right or wrong. So it’s a good idea for the body cam, and I be­lieve not on­ly some po­lice, but all po­lice of­fi­cers could wear that body cam.”

Oth­er res­i­dents were not aware of the de­tails of the bill and in­di­cat­ed that they were wait­ing for more in­for­ma­tion about the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion be­fore tak­ing a po­si­tion.