Poor response from Diego cops not new

THE EDITOR: I am responding to a recent Newsday story by Rhianna Mc Kenzie headed “Diego noise pollution disrupts virtual classes: ‘I can’t hear myself think,’” in which a Diego Martin resident complained about “constant loud music” from a businessplace in her area and the effect it is having on her ten-year-old’s ability to concentrate on the virtual learning being offered, since the child can barely hear what comes through to her, even with headphones.

According to the story, contacting the police seems to be a waste of time for many reasons. This I can confirm since I, too, have sought the assistance of the Diego Martin police and the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) over many years for the same kind of problem. The response from the police has been very poor the majority of time, while that of the EMA has been even worse.

When I wrote to the newspapers recently about calling 555, 800-TIPS and 482-GARY about 16 times to report a constant traffic violation in my area, the Police Commissioner found it necessary to say that 482-GARY is for reporting “crimes,” as though traffic violations of the nature described are not crimes.

On several of the occasions I called the 555 and the 800-TIPS operators to complain they told me they had passed my information to the West End Police Station and that they found it odd that there had been no response. According to them, West End was informed every time I called, yet the problem persists five months later.

Instead of the commissioner excoriating the letter-writer publicly for calling 800-GARY (even though the other police numbers were mentioned as having been called), he should have followed up to see why the West End police had done nothing about the complaint.

I guess now that he has been distinguishing between private and public property regarding police interventions, we should see the police taking more of a hands-off approach to the type of complaint made by the aggrieved Diego Martin resident.

CLYDE ALPHONSO

via e-mail