Ak­ile Si­mon

Of­fi­cers as­signed to the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion are threat­en­ing to aban­don the build­ing af­ter loose con­crete fell from a beam on the out­side the up­per floor on Tues­day night. Po­lice said they be­lieved an uniden­ti­fied woman and her child, who were walk­ing on the pave­ment out­side the sta­tion at the time of the in­ci­dent, might have been in­jured. The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 8.30 pm. Con­crete from a por­tion of the build­ing which hangs over the pave­ment has been falling, of­fi­cers said.

The area re­mained cor­doned off with po­lice cau­tion tape. Po­lice of­fi­cers said they feared the en­tire struc­ture could col­lapse in the event of an earth­quake. Of­fi­cers said they had been oc­cu­py­ing the build­ing, which be­longed to a busi­ness­man, since 1999. They said nu­mer­ous com­plaints had been made re­gard­ing prob­lems with the build­ing. One law­man said there was no fire es­cape route or ex­tin­guish­ers. The of­fi­cers said there was a se­vere sew­er prob­lem at the sta­tion which forced the clo­sure of the cell block, last year. "Promis­es were made that once we oc­cu­py the build­ing, it would be ren­o­vat­ed, but that nev­er hap­pened," a con­cerned of­fi­cer said yes­ter­day.

"The roof leak­ing, the floors leak­ing and a por­tion of the up­per floor could cave in down­stairs at the CID of­fice any­time, be­cause the floor­ing is filled with wa­ter." An­oth­er of­fi­cer said the con­di­tions they work un­der was against the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act. The build­ing hous­es the Charge Room, CID, Re­peat Of­fend­ers Pro­gramme Unit and the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion. Vice-pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, ASP Ish­mael David, said he was aware of the lat­est in­ci­dent. He said a let­ter was ex­pect­ed to be sent to head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Paul Ro­driguez, and act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert to have the sit­u­a­tion reme­died. Dur­ing a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Ro­driguez promised that the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion would be tak­en to deal with the sit­u­a­tion.