Constable reports "terrorising" comments to Police

Tuesday 19 March 2019

An islander who suggested "terrorising" St. Peter's Constable and the Infrastructure Minister in response to their approach to coastal campers has been reported to the Police as the Le Port debate continues to heat up.

Constable Richard Vibert says the comments were "quite a bit extreme" and breached the “threshold for criminal conviction”, but that he eventually asked the Police not to charge the individual involved.

The comment suggested parking outside Mr Vibert’s and Deputy Kevin Lewis's homes, as well as different ways of causing a nuisance.

Pictured: The comments were made on Facebook.

"Send pizas and order six ton of concrete on there driveways, empty bin bags all over there gardens and make nuisance phoncalls at ungodly hours, terrorise them eternally [sic],” the post concluded.

“Somebody else highlighted it to me and asked me if I wanted to report it to the Police,” the St. Peter Constable said. “The police asked me if I wanted the person to be charged but I told them I was confident they could deal with it by way of a warning. I don’t think a criminal conviction is what we need right now.”

The Constable said the comment appeared in a thread discussing the planning restrictions that were imposed earlier this month at Le Port “to deter vehicles from being left overnight or longer" and improve beach access for islanders, according to the Minister for Infrastructure, Deputy Kevin Lewis. 

Under the new rules, vehicles can only be only left for 12 hours in any 24-hour period in the area that has been favoured by coastal campers for many years.

Pictured: The comments were posted in a thread discussing the parking restrictions at Le Port.

Regular users of Le Port banded together to find a diplomatic resolution to the issue, but Mr Vibert hd refused to meet them, saying he wouldn’t negotiate about an "illegal activity".

He has now agreed to meet “a mixture of people who use Le Port”, including representatives of the Le Port Support Group and the Jersey Camping and Caravanning Club, as well as people “who claim they are intimated as they walk along Le Port".

But Mr Vibert says the latter are “so afraid to speak out” that they have so far refused to attend the meeting. “I don’t blame them,” he said, referring to the comments that were made against him.

“I would like other people to get involved,” Mr Vibert said, explaining that the meeting will be a discussion to get “similar views together".

Pictured: Richard Vibert has agreed to meet representatives of Le Port Support Group and the Camping and Caravanning Club.

He has asked both the support group and the club to only come with a restricted number of people to allow everyone to give their sides. “They will then be able to go back to the rest of their group to discuss and if needed, we will have another meeting,” the Constable said.

Last week, Senator Steve Pallett put forward a proposition to rescind the decision to impose parking restrictions.

Mr Vibert said that the proposals were not “new” and that the same things had been suggested before. “Nobody was interested in moving it along,” he said.

Mr Vibert defended the decision, saying that “a way of policing the area” was needed, due mainly to safety concerns caused by the high number of vehicles using the area and how close they were parked to each other.

Pictured: Mr Vibert says the restrictions were needed to bring "some order" to Le Port.

“Some control has got to be put in place,” he said, adding that there will not be a “quick way” out of a situation. “The Island Plan 2020 is the way forward for it. This will give the Ministers and the officers time to consider the site and the effects on those. Because there is an environmental effect.

"Le Port gradually got bigger as people were eating away at it. They have now put limits in place that bring it back to the original setting. Damage has been done over the years, the sand is gone, the plants are gone.”