Ke­jan Haynes

Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Arnold Ram has wel­comed the re­open­ing of the Bras­so Po­lice Sta­tion but crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment for wait­ing un­til tragedy struck to act.

His com­ments fol­low a vi­o­lent week­end in the dis­trict, de­scribed as "ter­ror" in Tabaquite which end­ed with the mur­der of 21-year-old Matthew Chan­cel­lor, who was re­port­ed­ly prepar­ing for his bap­tism.

Ram re­called op­pos­ing the sta­tion’s clo­sure in 2020, ar­gu­ing it was strate­gi­cal­ly placed to curb drug traf­fick­ing. “At meet­ings at the fa­cil­i­ty and the Flana­gin Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter, it was my­self and a col­league MP who strong­ly op­posed moves by the Min­is­ter and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice,” he said. "We cit­ed ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion in a hilly dis­trict with ex­treme­ly poor road in­fra­struc­ture as fac­tors that could de­lay re­sponse times and re­sult in peo­ple and fam­i­lies in dis­tress be­ing left vul­ner­a­ble."

While sup­port­ing the re­open­ing, Ram called it a sign of “poor lead­er­ship” and a re­fusal to lis­ten to elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives. “A de­cent young man is dead and a com­mu­ni­ty ter­rorised be­cause lead­er­ship re­fused to lis­ten,” he added.