Shas­tri Boodan

Cit­i­zens are be­ing ad­vised to build a “jail” in­side their homes where they can hide dur­ing home in­va­sions. That was the ad­vice from re­tired Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ken­ny Mcin­tyre at a town meet­ing at Cal­cut­ta Road #2, Freeport, on Sun­day. The meet­ing was con­vened by Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh fol­low­ing a re­cent spate of crimes in the area in­clud­ing the fire­bomb­ing of a gro­cery last Fri­day.

McIn­tyre, who al­so ad­vised cit­i­zens to arm them­selves, said: “With­in your house­hold se­cure a lit­tle room in which you can re­treat as a place of safe­ty in the event of home in­va­sions. I am talk­ing about a small prison, right round, block round, vent on top, a steel door with­out bars, just flush to lock in­side.

“In­side you must have a lt­tle cell­phone, three to four bot­tles of wa­ter, two to three pack of Crix, a flash­light and a cell­phone, a small cell­phone, that is if you have to stay there for a pe­ri­od of time. That will buy some time and have a cer­tain lev­el of safe­ty.”

He said res­i­dents should have po­lice and emer­gency num­bers on speed di­al.

Mcin­tyre said he had been a vic­tim of crime and that led him to in­vest in guard dogs

“If it means get­ting three to four pot hounds, mon­grels, put it in the yard, they will make noise, they are alarms,” he said.

He al­so told res­i­dents to en­sure their prop­er­ty is well lit and fenced and that they in­form fam­i­ly mem­bers of their where­abouts.

He ad­vised that if they de­cide to form a neigh­bour­hood watch group they should go to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent in the area and ask for at least one pa­trol.

“You are pay­ing tax­es for that,” he said.

He en­curaged cit­i­zens to ap­ply for firearms users li­cens­es (FUL), stat­ing: “You need a fight­ing chance. You need to arm your­selves, whether it be knives, cut­lass, fish­gun, pep­per spray. Get some sev­en-pot pep­per , put some wa­ter, put some salt in it, make it strong and put it in them spray bot­tles, es­pe­cial­ly for them ladies, that go in your eyes you will go in the hos­pi­tal, put it in strate­gic parts of the house.”

McIn­tire re­called that in 2014 res­i­dents of Fe­lic­i­ty used fish horns sig­nal when crim­i­nals were in the area.

Sergeant Mar­lon Stoute, of the­Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion, said po­lice of­fi­cers have been deal­ing with chal­lenges.

“We are try­ing to get by and once these chal­lenges are met we should be able to curb and ease the crime sit­u­a­tion by a lit­tle more mo­bile pa­trols as the case may be,” he said.

Stoute al­so promised more po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty. He said an af­ter mid­night pa­trol had start­ed and was yield­ing re­sults.

How­ev­er he ad­mit­ted that in­ci­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty last Fri­day had caused alarm, in­clud­ing a mur­der at St Mary’s Junc­tion and the rob­bery and fire­bomb­ing of a gro­cery in Cal­cut­ta

He urged mo­torists to be ob­ser­vant while dri­ving and if they be­lieve they are be­ing fol­lowed go straight to a po­lice sta­tion.

Stoute added that he is new to the area and is will­ing to meet reg­u­lar­ly with res­i­dents.

One of the res­i­dents at the meet­ing, Man­war Ali, said the gro­cery that was robbed and fire­bombed was owned by his cousin, Nizam Mo­hammed. He said Ali has been a vic­tim of nu­mer­ous rob­beries and was burnt dur­ing the lat­est at­tack. He is still in hos­pi­tal.

He ex­pressed the view that the crim­i­nals have be­come em­bold­ened be­cause they are not feel­ing the brunt of the law.

In­dars­ingh said the $3.5 mil­lion spent on the re­cent re­gion­al sym­po­sium could have been spent to pur­chase more ve­hi­cles for the po­lice and urged the res­i­dents to form a vig­i­lante group. How­ev­er, he lat­er clar­i­fied that he meant a vig­i­lant neigh­bour­hood watch group.