Citizens and political leaders seem at a loss what to do about crime in Saint Lucia. This week the Castries South opposition MP added to the confusion when he revealed at a town-hall meeting that crime “has gotten so bad that they, from what I am told, they are saying to people not to say how many homicides anymore.”
Perhaps the atypically faulty syntax is excusable. Inexplicably, local politicians when they speak English from their platforms, customarily relegate good grammar to a back seat, ostensibly in the best interests of their audience. But then Mr. Hilaire could’ve investigated what he claimed he had been told by an unidentified source in relation to local homicides.
He would have only himself to blame if he should find himself accused of seeking to profit by politicizing crime in the season of elections. Mr Hilaire’s statement on Tuesday was not only uncharacteristically gossipy and irresponsible; it was also not factual. Indeed, it made the police commissioner into a puppet, a ventriloquist’s dummy that speaks only the words of an unidentified puppeteer.
The truth is that never mind their overwhelming problems, the police have been most forthcoming with crime details, certainly during the last three years or so. Making things worse for Hilaire is that only last week this newspaper and other news media reported what they had learned from the police on the matter of homicides, including that the latest figure at time of reporting was 41. It now stands at 42. It is also no secret the number of cold cases on the police files.
It should also be reported that in the middle of his delivery on Tuesday the opposition MP seemed suddenly to change direction. Finally what he said in effect was that crime will continue to rise unless there’s a bipartisan effort to stamp it out—a faultless observation on Mr. Hilaire’s part that flew in the face of his earlier uncorroborated statement. Doubtless in the days ahead he will offer more than words and demonstrate his party’s willingness to assist the government’s efforts at ameliorating the crime situation, connected as it is to IMPACS. It would also serve if Mr. Hilaire and the rest of his party spoke out publicly and in non-partisan fashion against crime, at least as strongly as they did in 1998 and during the time of Operation Restore Peace!
But this hasn’t been the only talking point surrounding crime in Saint Lucia. A common theme that has emerged has been how unprecedented Saint Lucia’s 2019 criminal activity is. Like Hilaire’s comments, there is nothing to substantiate this claim. Nevertheless, Acting ACP George Nicholas expressed this sentiment last week, saying: “Obviously the criminals have taken their game to a new level and it is up to law enforcement to up our game.” His comments came after a law enforcement officer’s firearm was stolen by robbers at a local bar in the north of the island. Hardly the first time a law enforcement officer was the victim of a robbery.
“We have to be more aggressive,” Nicholas continued. “We have to be more forceful when we respond to these kinds of criminal activities and this notion that the criminals want to take on the police—it’s taking it to another level so we have to step up our game.” Prime Minister Allen Chastanet this week, spoke along the same vein: “We have absolutely seen a spike in certain areas of crime: burglaries, robberies, as well as stolen cars.” He said on Monday. “These have been the three that have really been problematic for us.”
He went on: “We’ve been doing a good job of monitoring certain areas and what we’ve seen is that crime has now moved to the outskirts of Saint Lucia. And I think the horrific part has been we’ve seen an increase of crimes that we didn’t normally see in the rural areas; and everybody’s very, very shocked, as we are. And we’re also very shocked at the willingness of criminals to kill people for very little. It’s a very worrisome issue in terms of how people are willing to just compromise with the criminals. But we’re seeing people shooting people for twenty dollars. And it’s a very worrisome trend and I think this is what officer Nicholas was really talking about; the change in the attitude of some of our people.” Of course, crimes have always happened all over the island, including in the ‘idyllic’ rural areas. As for civilians now getting killed for as little as twenty dollars, victims then and now have been killed for far less.
As to solutions to the problem, the PM at least went one better than Hilaire who offered none. Chastanet said: “Your government takes crime extremely seriously, and is putting in the resources to resolve this problem and I’m telling you that we will fix this problem. We can never make crime go away entirely but we don’t have scanners at the ports. The easiest way for people to bring guns into this country has still been through the containers. So we are moving very quickly with SLASPA. And the meeting I’m having is to develop a relationship with the port of Miami, to get new scanners in for the barrels, that we can start clamping down and reducing the number of guns coming into our country.”
Chastanet added: “We’ve had forty new officers come on board. And, as you know, I’ve been pushing very hard to get the border control system in place. There are another fifty officers that are currently acting as immigration officers and we want to get those officers back into the force as well.”
The PM’s tune on crime though, was not too dissimilar to those of his predecessors. Moreover, these grandiose solutions to crime from the mouths of politicians, which have had very little success up till now, are seemingly wearing thin on the ears of the local populace. Who hasn’t heard on radio or read on social media, the cries for the return of Operation Restore Confidence (ORC)?
And speaking of ORC, it is undeniable that the man who most embodies that infamous operation is former police commissioner Vernon Francois who, last week, appeared on various talk shows to promote his new book. Interestingly on Newsspin Francois pointed out:“We do not need another ORC. It was something that happened at a particular time for a particular period.”
Hardly anyone can argue that Francois, despite his controversial tenure in the police commissioner post, is undeniably one of the best qualified to speak on Saint Lucia’s crime problem. As one radio caller told Francois last week: “You are the best police commissioner Saint Lucia’s ever had,”—an opinion shared by a not insignificant portion of the country.
It is against this backdrop perhaps that we should take Francois’ word on the widely held opinion that crime is worse than it’s ever been. “To my mind, the crime situation was worse in 2010 and 2011 than it is now.” He went further: “I don’t think we should panic and I think that’s what the police need to avoid. Saint Lucians, too, should not panic. We’ve dealt with spikes in crime before.”
Neither should we whitewash our well-documented history of crime—some of which is far more gruesome than what we’ve endured so far in 2019—in a vain hope that this will somehow trigger a response to the issues we’re currently facing. All it will accomplish is a doomed repetition of already failed solutions to sadly forgotten problems. I’ll end by returning to the PM’s words on Monday: “Saying that crime is a priority and not providing law enforcement the resources to do their job is the greatest injustice, and the greatest level of hypocrisy.” Let us hope he takes his own advice.
