Prospec­tive Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date for Tu­na­puna Roger Alexan­der has re­vealed that he and his par­ty have al­ready dis­cussed plans to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion af­fect­ing the area and the coun­try as a whole. 

Alexan­der gave the as­sur­ance as he par­tic­i­pat­ed in his first walk­a­bout in com­mu­ni­ties off Main­got Road in Tu­na­puna, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

It came days af­ter he was of­fi­cial­ly re­vealed as the prospec­tive can­di­date hav­ing been tout­ed for the role up­on re­cent­ly re­sign­ing from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) at the rank of Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent. 

While Alexan­der de­clined to re­veal spe­cif­ic mea­sures with­out the ap­proval of Op­po­si­tion and UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, he sug­gest­ed that they (the mea­sures) may in­clude pro­vid­ing more re­sources in­clud­ing mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. 

“When you give them the re­sources and the nec­es­sary tech­nol­o­gy then you can hold these in­sti­tu­tions to ac­count,” Alexan­der said. 

Tu­na­puna saw sev­er­al mur­ders and re­port­ed gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty last year and in 2023.

He al­so mild­ly crit­i­cised the per­for­mance of act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin and sus­pend­ed po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, un­der whose tenures he served be­fore re­sign­ing to con­test the elec­tion. 

“Let me be hon­est. As it stands right now the per­son at the helm of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, he came in­to some­thing new. On the last oc­ca­sion, there were per­sons there, con­fused by na­ture and un­able to per­form prop­er­ly,” he said. 

De­scrib­ing him­self as the “street com­mis­sion­er”, Alexan­der claimed that his abil­i­ty to in­ter­act with mem­bers of the pub­lic and de­liv­er re­sults would as­sist him in trans­form­ing Tu­na­puna in­to a “mod­el” con­stituen­cy, if he is even­tu­al­ly elect­ed on April 28. 

“When you know the needs of the peo­ple it is easy to treat with it, but if you don’t know be­cause you don’t care, then on­ly once in five years you have to rush and come and do things, which could have been done, day af­ter day,” he said. 

“My thing is to bring that new type of pol­i­tics to the game. I am not in ‘spit­ty mouth’ pol­i­tics,” he said, as he point­ed to a pile of garbage over­flow­ing out of a com­mu­ni­ty re­cep­ta­cle along First Trace. 

Asked to re­spond to un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions from cit­i­zens, who ac­cused him of cor­rup­tion while serv­ing as a po­lice of­fi­cer, Alexan­der an­swered diplo­mat­i­cal­ly. 

“I love them all. I re­spect them and I will serve them and pro­tect them be­cause they too have a fu­ture,” he said. 

Asked about the feed­back he re­ceived since his can­di­da­cy was an­nounced, he said: “Won­der­ful is the word and sup­port­ive.”

“Per­sons are look­ing for­ward for a dif­fer­ent type of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, a dif­fer­ent type of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, a dif­fer­ent type of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for every cit­i­zen,” he said. 

“If you are look­ing in my di­rec­tion for that, well then you have cho­sen the right per­son,” he added. 

The in­cum­bent MP for Tu­na­puna is Es­mond Forde who was re-se­lect­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to con­test the seat in the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.