JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Barbados AG says island will not be held under siege

by

37 days ago
20250121
Attorney General, Dale Marshall (File Photo)

Attorney General, Dale Marshall (File Photo)

The Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment says it will not al­low any com­mu­ni­ty on the is­land to be held un­der siege un­der any cir­cum­stances.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Dale Mar­shall, said that 2025 has be­gun “with gun­men wreak­ing hav­oc” in the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty of the Pine in the south­west por­tion of the is­land.

He said for­tu­nate­ly, while the in­juries sus­tained have not been life-threat­en­ing, “what has ob­vi­ous­ly been threat­ened is the abil­i­ty of the res­i­dents to live peace­ful­ly in their homes and to be out­doors in the night, as is their right.

“We will not al­low any com­mu­ni­ty in Bar­ba­dos to be held un­der siege, not un­der any cir­cum­stances. The Po­lice Ser­vice is there­fore de­ter­mined that as an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, the Pine ar­eas will see sat­u­rat­ed polic­ing.”

Mar­shall said this re­sponse will cer­tain­ly place in­creased pres­sure on the man­pow­er re­sources, “but this is a nec­es­sary step at this stage”  and that there are, of course, oth­er mat­ters that are be­ing pur­sued, but those are op­er­a­tional mat­ters that are left to the po­lice lead­er­ship.

Mar­shall said he was ask­ing the res­i­dents of the Pine to match the po­lice ef­forts at mak­ing them safe by com­ing for­ward with what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion they may have, no mat­ter how in­signif­i­cant they may feel it to be.

“Ear­ly in­for­ma­tion al­lows the Po­lice Ser­vice to be more ef­fec­tive in their ef­forts and can even help them to pre­vent these kinds of oc­cur­rences. This is not an idle state­ment. On nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, the Po­lice Ser­vice has been able to take steps to neu­tralise threats to our com­mu­ni­ties com­plete­ly un­known to res­i­dents. Help them to help you.

“From the gov­ern­ment side, we are con­tin­u­ing to strength­en the hand of law en­force­ment in a va­ri­ety of ways, tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial and leg­isla­tive. We’re al­so work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with our CARI­COM sis­ter gov­ern­ments to ad­dress the crime is­sues that we are all see­ing on the rise across the re­gion.”

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said the work con­tin­ues every day at keep­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in check, prais­ing the mem­bers of the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Ser­vice “who put their lives and well-be­ing at risk con­stant­ly to keep us all safe”.

Last week, po­lice warned crim­i­nals of a crack­down on their ac­tiv­i­ties af­ter the is­land record­ed three mur­ders.

“It has not been com­fort­ing from the per­spec­tive that 13 days in­to the year, we have three homi­cides, we have in­stances of rob­beries, we have had youth crime, and we have had some con­cern about the whole area of roads polic­ing. I say roads polic­ing be­cause it is per­haps one of the ar­eas we have to em­pha­sise at this meet­ing,”  Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Er­win Boyce, told a news con­fer­ence then.

“What I am say­ing to those per­sons who think they are strong enough and bold enough and brazen enough and brash enough to do these things, we are go­ing to get you. We are go­ing to get you; The Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Ser­vice is go­ing to get you; and we are go­ing to get you soon­er [rather] than lat­er.”

Bar­ba­dos record­ed 50 killings last year.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Jan 21, CMC

CMC/af/ir/2025


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored