Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad has called on cit­i­zens to cre­ate Zones of Sup­port and Safe­ty, or ZOSAS, with­in homes and com­mu­ni­ties as part of a na­tion­al re­sponse to crime.

Speak­ing at a Moth­er’s Day func­tion host­ed by the Ro­tary Club of Pe­nal on Sat­ur­day, Seep­er­sad said the coun­try could not re­ly sole­ly on the State to solve the crime cri­sis and urged cit­i­zens to be­come more proac­tive in guid­ing and sup­port­ing young peo­ple.

He ref­er­enced the wider na­tion­al de­bate on Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO), a pro­posed se­cu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy aimed at tack­ling vi­o­lent crime in hotspot com­mu­ni­ties through joint po­lice and mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment, along­side so­cial in­ter­ven­tion mea­sures. The leg­is­la­tion, how­ev­er, did not se­cure the re­quired sup­port of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors in Par­lia­ment. He said the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ZOSAS re­quired a col­lec­tive na­tion­al ef­fort.