Of the many facets of Saint Lucian life touched on by Prime Minister Allen Chastanet in his 2020 New Year’s speech on Sunday, crime and security perhaps tops the list in terms of importance. The arrest of a man in possession of an M4 at Morne Du Don, not to say the fatal shooting of Cassius Glasgow, served to underscore the prime minister’s concerns.
“We cannot and will not deny that the crime situation continues to affect us deeply,” he said Sunday. “We feel it every time a young person loses his or her life through violence. It not only impacts their families but we also lose what they may have contributed to the development of our society.”
That Glasgow may have been shot even as the prime minister was speaking is nothing short of discombobulating. Echoing a recent statement by the police, the prime minister reiterated that we cannot hope to deal effectively with crime “without seriously considering how we live, raise our children, our interactions, the way we resolve conflict and how impulsive we may be about settling scores”.
At the end of 2019 police superintendent George Nicholas blamed most local homicides on poor conflict resolution.
In Sunday’s address the PM said: “We must continuously work on this as a society, even as the government implements measures to help prevent, detect and solve crime. Internally, we have started a process of measuring the results on a weekly basis. While we have not achieved the kind of success we would all want, we know that the effort we are making will pay off. We remain committed to the multi-pronged strategy to significantly reduce crime.”
Chastanet also promised “in the next few weeks” to announce changes intended to accelerate measures to bring crime under control and to strengthen the police force.
On Wednesday at a police press conference, Milton Desir, when asked to comment on the PM’s remarks, said: “I cannot go into detail now but there are plans to restructure the police force. I’ve spoken to my police executive and we are hoping that 2020 will be a better policing year in terms of figures.”
The crime section of the New Year’s speech ended with Chastanet citing some of what his government has done to help ameliorate the crime situation: “The modernization of the police force with communications equipment, and vehicles; the installation of 95 CCTV camera feeds; the recruitment of 80 new officers; the reopening of the forensic lab; the restoration of coastguard vessels operations and a restored radar system.”
Finally, there’s this from the prime minister: “I must take a moment to assure Saint Lucians that despite the empty accusations and spreading of false news that seems to pervade our society of late, our government remains committed to good governance and transparency. In April 2017 we illustrated this by passing the landmark amendment to the Crown Proceedings Act, which was a recommendation of the 2009 Ramsahoye Commission of Inquiry. The amendment allows for the recovery of public funds not to be statute bound. It is worth noting that during that particular sitting of parliament, the Opposition chose not to remain in the House to discuss this critical matter.”
