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.... Guest Editorial

03rd July 2010
Crime-The past six months

Home Affairs and National Security Minister Guy Mayers on Tuesday December 29,2009 challenged the Commissioner and members of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force to reduce crime by 50 percent in 2010.
Back then Ausbert Regis was still Police Commissioner.
Since then Regis has been relieved of his post, the man who was in charge of crime information and crime investigation under Regis is now the Commissioner. He was appointed in late May 2010 five months after Mayers issued his command to the Police Force to reduce crime by 50 percent in 2010.
Six months of 2010 have passed, enough of a yardstick to determine whether or not the Police Force had done enough to have met or is well on its way to meeting the directive issued to it by Minister Mayers in December 2009.
It is clear that from the issuing of the Minister’s instruction to the removal of Regis on 27th May 2010, crime has gone in the opposite direction to the one the Minister envisaged. During that five month period crime, which already was on an upward climb, took on a heinous nature. Dressed in garments of pure evil, homicides through gun violence, took on not just another meaning but another horrific appearance when gunmen started killing family members of persons they were hunting for but could not waylay in order to dish out their type of justice.
Enter June 2010.
Government needed a miracle. Something had to be done to stop the almost bi-weekly homicides caused by gun-toting young men, in various parts of the country.
It is too early to describe acting Commissioner Vernon Francois as the miracle the government so badly needed to stem the crime leakage that was threatening to spread like the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the same way British Petroleum had to do something to show the world that it is engaged and deeply so in stopping the gushing spillage of oil in the ocean, so had the government to show Saint Lucians it was doing something, anything to stop not just the rising crime surge but the ghastly nature of those killings.
 
 

A shake-up of the Police Force was government’s big move as the dawn of June 2010 broke over the hilly face of Saint Lucia. And with the dawn came the news that Vernon Francois had replaced Regis. One month has gone by since Francois is at the helm of the country’s Police Force and what a month it has been, not in terms of more killings but in the immediate non occurrence of gun related deaths.
Does that mean there has been a reduction in criminal activities over the past month? And is it too early to pass judgment on the score card of the new head of the Police Force?
The debate depends on whom one speaks to. No doubt supporters of the government would want to say that changes in the national crime fighting strategy, which includes the reshuffling within the Police Force, have been responsible for the absence of shooting incidents in inner city neighbourhoods for the past month.
We welcome whatever it is that is responsible for the reduction of violent gun crimes in the past month and hope that this continues this month and beyond. The Police Force, however still has is work cut out for it and is still far from coming close to the directive issued by Minister Mayers in December 2009. That is in no way a condemnation because we all know of the difficulties lawmen face in confronting crime in this country. What Saint Lucians are asking for is for the face of the police to be seen fast enough when cries for help are directed at them and when criminals need to be caught.
Crime is still at an all time high incidents of which are recorded in the weekly newspapers and daily radio and television newscasts in the country. While we believe it is still too early to uplift Francois and his men and women we believe that they need all the assistance they can get. Whoever heads the Police Force will need our help because it is to him/her we will be running when crime comes knocking on our door. (M.G)

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