Councillor To Be Charged

White said the coun­cil­lor is to be charged with obstruct­ing police and assault­ing the police. “We are tak­ing strong actions against him. The Police Federation has been sum­moned, too, because the police were abused and assault­ed by him,” White said. The pend­ing charges against the coun­cil­lor stem from an inci­dent on the week­end dur­ing a police oper­a­tion to remove ille­gal ven­dors from the streets of Savanna-la-Mar, the Westmoreland cap­i­tal. According to White, mem­bers of the Westmoreland police and the Westmoreland Parish Council munic­i­pal police were con­duct­ing a joint anti-street vend­ing oper­a­tion when the coun­cil­lor stepped in and sought to bring the activ­i­ty to a halt, assault­ing the police in the process. “… he came on the scene and start­ed ver­bal­ly abus­ing the police, point up his fin­ger in the police face and tell them to low the peo­ple dem,” White not­ed. He said that the councillor’s action result­ed in a street brawl which drew a large crowd. He said rein­force­ment had to be called in.

White said the idea was to arrest the coun­cil­lor on the scene and offer him sta­tion bail but it was decid­ed instead to pro­ceed by way of sum­mons. “We are going to make an exam­ple. I don’t know if it is cheap pop­u­lar­i­ty he is try­ing to seek but the law is say­ing that no man is exempt, irre­spec­tive of your creed, class or your social sta­tus. That’s the law,” he added.

“I have nev­er seen this in the his­to­ry of my polic­ing where a coun­cil­lor would act in such a man­ner,” he said.

DSP White, who took over com­mand of the Westmoreland Police Division ear­li­er this year, has said that one of his pri­or­i­ties is to rid the town cen­tres in the parish of ille­gal vend­ing. White, who is adamant about a link between crim­i­nal activ­i­ties and street vend­ing, ear­li­er this month launched an anti-street vend­ing cam­paign in the areas of Savanna-la-Mar, Grange Hill and Negril. “We know that a num­ber of our ven­dors are there as a result of the pro­ceeds from crime. We also know that some of them have been strate­gi­cal­ly placed by some crim­i­nal ele­ments with­in the town,” he insist­ed. “There is a very strong link of crime in Westmoreland and vend­ing in the dif­fer­ent town­ships. And, there­fore, our activ­i­ty is to remove many of them to cre­ate that pub­lic safe­ty with­in. He added: “Some of them have tak­en up res­i­dence around even the finan­cial insti­tu­tions and wher­ev­er there are shop­ping cen­tres, and where you have a group of them in between are the crim­i­nal ele­ments, who come and prey on the inno­cent shop­pers.” Councillor to be charged