Project Safe Trade Makes Internet Purchases Safer In Essex

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The Town of Essex is the fourth county municipality to add community safety zones to exchange items purchased over the internet.

Two Internet Purchase Exchange Zones have been established, one at the Harrow OPP Detachment and the other in the parking lot at the Essex OPP satellite office in Essex Centre.

Each location is identified by signage posted at the parking area reserved for buyers and sellers.

“This project is designed to provide people with a public location in which to conduct the sale of items arranged online,” says OPP Sergeant Jeff Coulter. “Meeting strangers in secluded parking lots or inviting them to your home is not always safe. Project Safe Trade is intended to increase safety and deter unlawful behaviour by providing a visible public space near a police facility.”

Coulter says the police will not mediate private transactions or act as witnesses.

“The purpose of the program is to deter fraud and theft related to transactions arranged online, not to involve the police in the purchase, sale or exchange.”

Project Safe Trade was initiated as a pilot project in Tecumseh last April and introduced in Lakeshore in November and Kingsville in February.