The Op­po­si­tion has re­ject­ed claims that Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion could have pre­vent­ed the Bel­mont triple mur­der that left a tod­dler dead, even as the Gov­ern­ment de­fends the ef­fec­tive­ness of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SOE) and con­tin­ues to pro­mote ZOSO as part of its wider crime strat­e­gy.

The po­lit­i­cal clash comes in the af­ter­math of Thurs­day’s shoot­ing in Bel­mont that claimed the lives of 23-month-old Aki­ni Kafi, his 30-year-old fa­ther Aquil Kafi and fam­i­ly friend An­tho­ny Wil­son, 28. The child’s moth­er, 36-year-old An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, re­mains hos­pi­talised in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

The in­ci­dent, which was yes­ter­day linked to a quadru­ple mur­der along the La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant, last month by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, has since in­ten­si­fied scruti­ny of the Gov­ern­ment’s crime strat­e­gy.