Better protection needed for at-risk councillors – Golding

Opposition Leader Mark Golding, calling for regular risk assessments to be carried out to determine the level of security threat faced by councillors while carrying out their duties, has said that where there are real, known concerns, they should be given protection by the State.

Golding was speaking yesterday during a brief memorial service and counselling session for councillors and members of staff at the Portmore City Municpality in wake of the killing of one of their own, Southboro Councillor Ainsley Parkins, otherwise called 'Tyson'.

“I know that many councillors feel that their security is not sufficiently looked after by the State, they have to be interacting with the public in communities administering scarce resources, and the demand for those sources always exceed the supply and this can often put them into situations where misunderstandings are possible or where persons resent decisions that are taken,” Golding said.

He continued: “This is an important issue and anything positive that can come out of the situation that happened last Thursday, I hope that it will be a revisiting of the security arrangements for elected officials who are at risk.”

Golding added that Parkins faced that risk but he was not protected by the State. He described as a frightening thought the fact that an elected official could be assassinated in broad daylight on a Thursday morning on a public roadway here in Jamaica.

“We live in an extremely violent society and we have not been able to come to terms with this reality, and it is quite clear that the measures that are being employed are not suffient or adequate to address these issues,” the opposition leader noted in an apparent swipe at the Government's crime management plan.

Parkins' colleague councillor, Fenley Douglas, was forthright in his call for security details for councillors.

“I am making a public call to the Government of Jamaica, and I don't really want to hear whether we have the security personnel or not, but we must prioritise and understand that while we fight for better, we need help in doing so from the security side, and why is it that we can deploy a thousand police officers to Sumfest but we can't deploy one to a councillor,” Douglas stated.

He said the system failed Parkins as he had been crying for help for many years due to the nature of his job, and not only him but other councillors were faced with serious security risks.

“I recalled at one point I was worried for Tyson. We were all concerned as his colleagues and no one went to his assistance. The system became so tribal and political that at one stage he was even disarmed and the police would call him to say 'Tyson, your life is in danger' and we do a security assessment and it was left there. No one went to his rescue,” recalled Douglas.

Also speaking at the service was Dr Alfred Dawes, the PNP's candidate for St Catherine South East, who was adamant that the State can do better, suggesting that there are steps that could have been taken to protect not just Tyson but the next possible victim of a murder.

Dawes said the police in Portmore are not equipped with the resources they need and this was why Portmore kept popping up negatively in the news, whether in relation to an armoured vehicle being assaulted in broad daylight, a student being abducted and brutally murdered, or an elected representative been assassinated in his division.

“We have to do better,” he insisted.