I’ve invited you to look more deeply at the issues of crime in our society, in our country. I reflect that over the years, we have done almost everything people demanded of us to do about crime, yet we have not been able to resolve it. What on earth is wrong?
I invite you to remember the SLP initiatives over the years that we have been in office. Remember the number of new and refurbished police stations? We built the greatest number of police stations in this country. On the legislative front, we modernized our laws. We enacted a new Criminal Code. Can you remember that Criminal Code? I’m sure you remember because although we had a criminal code, a lot of people thought the criminal code was solely about the issues of abortion— but that’s another story for another time.
We also enacted a new Evidence Act to arm the police with better laws, so that they can gather evidence that can provide them with the convictions that they need. Then we brought reform to the court system. We introduced a Criminal Division of the High Court to deal with criminal offences and we thought this reform would have helped to reduce those in remand to justice faster, more quickly. The question is: have we realized the promise of that initiative?
We enacted, as we promised in our last manifesto, anti-gang legislation and I’m gonna have a little more to say about that. We were the ones who constructed a forensic lab in this country. And when I hear Chastanet and Hermangild Francis boast about the fact that they met a forensic lab that was closed, I can only laugh because I remember Chastanet saying Saint Lucia does not need a forensic lab, that what he supports is a regional forensic facility to serve all the islands. Saint Lucia does not need a forensic lab, he said. He opposed it!
And then there were reforms to the police force. We made changes to the high command. We increased the numbers who got promotions to the upper echelons of the police force—the intention being that we would’ve produced a cadre of officers to pave the way for the appointment of deputy police commissioners and when the time arose for it, commissioners of police.
We took the dramatic step to invite foreign personnel to help with the reform process. I turned to Canada and then when that didn’t work out we turned to British police officers, but that too did not work out. They met stiff competition. Many of them could not cope with the conditions and opted to return to the United Kingdom. We have had another lesson to learn.
Then there was significant investment in vehicles, especially for the World Cup. And all the time we hear the police have no vehicles, that we were not giving them the resources. Yet they were provided with brand new vehicles, motorcycles, bicycles, all kinds of paraphernalia to help them to combat crime. And I’m sure that you will not forget that at the other end of the spectrum, it was the Labour Party that built a new correctional facility to drive rehabilitation.
It was intended to work hand-in-hand with the new reforms so that at least we could’ve used new correctional methods to deal with those who had been incarcerated at Bordelais Correctional Center. Unless you forget too—because the point is always made that we need to motivate our police officers, we need to encourage them, we need to provide them with better conditions of employment; none of those things I deny; we need to provide them with opportunities—we enacted legislation to govern compensation for police officers. We were the government that did it. Yes, there have been subsequent amendments but the inspiration came from us.
Then remember, too, when the public complained that they were mistreated by the police, they were unfairly treated, they were abused, that the solution was the creation of a Police Complaints Authority. We did, we enacted legislation. We created it. Whether of course it has worked is a different question.
And remember another initiative that I want to touch on very briefly: Remember we used to provide incentives for the return of unlawful firearms? Remember the number of firearms we recovered? The highest number of firearms in any one year. You know what? The United Workers Party, when they won the general election in 2006, they promptly discontinued it. They said it was a waste of money. And over the years what have we seen? The proliferation of weapons, of guns of all types, all makes, all kinds of sophistication.
And then too we reached out to the public. We introduced more town hall style meetings to bring the police to the community so that the community can explain to them their fears, their hopes and offer solace and advice to deal with the problem of crime.
This is not to say that the United Workers Party did not have initiatives. Yes they did! And there were a few. They introduced cameras in selected places—although the Labour Party found when it got into office, none of these cameras worked. They of course devised and operationalized. They had Operation Restore Confidence, and you know the result of that. Then in recent times we can say they have created a new arm of the police, the City Police. Of course it is the private police force of the Mayor of Castries. Then, too, they have replaced vehicles.
But more than anything else they have politicized the hierarchy of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, to the point where the police force is hardly recognizable. The word independence has just disappeared and evaporated.
Now the question is, when we bring all of these initiatives together, why then have they seemingly had little impact on the problem of crime in Saint Lucia? We bring these initiatives whether jointly or individually, yet we do not seem to have got the results we wanted. That’s a problem we have because it is not for lack of trying, not for lack of new initiatives, not for lack of wanting to tackle the problems head on. Yet crime remains stubborn. It means, therefore, that we have got some things wrong and we are not doing the right things. And I put it to you that this government must take the blame more than any other government in the history of Saint Lucia because it has become helpless. It does not know what to do to deal with the problems that face us. The statistics speak for themselves. And when you ask them for what new initiatives they have introduced, they can’t tell you, they cannot show you.
As a country, as a people, as a community we cannot descend into helplessness. We cannot normalize a life of crime. We have to fight it. We have to resolve it and we cannot avoid discussion of it. We now have to produce a new agenda to fight crime in our country. We need to be bold! We need to be dramatic! We need to be imaginative! We need to revisit all the approaches of the past and discard what has not worked and we have to search for new solutions.
-Dr. Kenny Anthony
Editor’s note: The former prime minister and current MP for Vieux Fort South addressed the nation on Tuesday evening via Zoom, with the day’s main topic centered on four homicides in less than 24 hours. Of course, the nation had been there before!
This article first appeared in the May 2021 edition of the STAR Monthly Review. Be sure to get your printed copy on newsstands or view it here: https://issuu.com/starbusinessweek/docs/star_monthly_review_-_may_31_2021
