RALPH BAN­WARIE

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to sta­tions along the north­east coast, name­ly Matu­ra, Matelot and To­co, are call­ing on Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to have po­lice ve­hi­cles sent there so they can car­ry out their du­ties.

The of­fi­cers, who asked that their names not be pub­lished, com­plained about not hav­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles for some time and de­spite all their pleas, they say noth­ing has changed.

The of­fi­cers said they be­lieve all their con­cerns were falling on deaf ears.

The of­fi­cers, who de­scribed them­selves as ded­i­cat­ed, said they can­not re­spond to dis­tress calls and re­ports quick­ly.

“We are hand­i­capped in re­spond­ing to re­ports of crime in a time­ly man­ner,” said one of the of­fi­cers.

He added, “It is very em­bar­rass­ing as these sta­tions have very large dis­tricts and most of the time they are un­able to re­spond to re­ports.”

The of­fi­cers said they of­ten use their own ve­hi­cles to in­ves­ti­gate crimes, which they said demon­strat­ed their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and com­mit­ment to safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly since these ar­eas are known for high drug traf­fick­ing.

A se­nior of­fi­cer claimed there is one ve­hi­cle at Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion and one at the East­ern Di­vi­sion­al head­quar­ters. This, he said, was in­suf­fi­cient to re­spond to the needs of the com­mu­ni­ties.

The se­nior of­fi­cer al­so said that of­fi­cers at the Matelot Po­lice Sta­tion have been housed in a con­tain­er for quite some time and noth­ing has been done to im­prove their ac­com­mo­da­tions.

The of­fi­cers are call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, who re­tired from the po­lice ser­vice as a se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent to con­test the Gen­er­al Elec­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, to vis­it these po­lice sta­tions and see for him­self the lim­i­ta­tions they face.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the TTPS’ cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cial Joanne Archie, she said she would have to look in­to the mat­ter first and then is­sue a re­sponse.

At­tempts to call and mes­sage Min­is­ter Alexan­der were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.