Lucea police HQ to be repaired
Lucea, Hanover – Repair and maintenance work on the cells at the police divisional headquarters at Lucea, Hanover should begin in another next two weeks.
National Security Minister, Peter Phillips, made the announcement last Friday after a tour of the five police stations and police post in the parish. According to Phillips, the tour had opened his eyes to the need for repairs at some of the stations in the parish. However, he said those repairs, with the exception of the main lock-up at the divisional headquarters in Lucea, were minor.
“There is need for some significant work to be done to the cell block here at the divisional headquarters, and we hope that in the course of the next week, certainly within the next two weeks, that work will start,” the minister said.
At the same time, he said there was a clear need for additional police vehicles in the parish and this would also be addressed.
“Of course, as elsewhere, there is the need to deal with the mobility of the police. (We need) bikes, particularly here on the North Coast Highway, where there is a need to enhance the traffic policing capability of the division, we are going to have to address that, and there is need for a number of vehicles,” he said.
“We are in the process of ordering some vehicles, which won’t deal with all the needs of the force, but we will try to make certain that Hanover is included in this,” he added.
Meanwhile, Phillips expressed gratitude for the assistance given by civic groups in the parish to date, to help to keep the police mobile. As part of a national initiative, he said, he intended to focus on how citizens could work with the police to fight crime across the island .
Such an initiative, the security minister said, was a necessary step toward working on a crime prevention plan that saw citizens being educated on the causes of criminal behaviour and how, as a community, they could address the problem.
“In the end, we have to recognise that this struggle is not a struggle for the police, as much as it is a struggle for the entire country to address,” he said.
