St. Vin­cent po­lice have can­celled all va­ca­tion and no-pay leave for of­fi­cers un­til fur­ther no­tice as law­men move to pre­vent pos­si­ble reprisals fol­low­ing the mur­ders of five peo­ple in the cap­i­tal, Kingstown, on Wednes­day night.

A cir­cu­lar is­sued by the Roy­al St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines Po­lice Force, said that the gazetted of­fi­cers al­so de­cid­ed to re­struc­ture the leave sys­tem for po­lice of­fi­cers and that Di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders were al­so or­dered to in­form ranks un­der their com­mand.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Col­in John, told a joint press con­fer­ence with act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Mont­gomery Daniel and oth­er mem­bers of the Cab­i­net that the po­lice force had re­ceived in­tel­li­gence “about pos­si­ble reprisals."

“And that is some­thing that we are tak­ing very se­ri­ous­ly. We’re al­so tak­ing this shoot­ing, these fa­tal­i­ties very se­ri­ous­ly, as we do with every crime, es­pe­cial­ly se­ri­ous crimes with­in St. Vin­cent Grenadines,” John said.

He said that po­lice in­tel­li­gence sug­gests that some of the killings in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines are linked and the ma­jor­i­ty of ma­jor crimes are com­mit­ted by few­er than 100 peo­ple.

“… less than 100 per­sons in a pop­u­la­tion of over 110,000 per­sons. So that’s a small group of per­sons. And al­so, based on our in­tel­li­gence, these shoot­ings, the ma­jor­i­ty of them, they as a re­sult of some­thing that … hap­pened since 2014, where some drug trans­ac­tion went wrong and then per­sons who are friends then be­came foe and then it con­tin­ued up to to­day,” John said as he at­tempt­ed to as­sure cit­i­zens the coun­try is “gen­er­al­ly safe”.

John said that the po­lice had act­ed on that in­tel­li­gence “so much so that some per­sons who were killed (Wednes­day night), we had spo­ken to them be­fore and that … as­sist­ed in pre­serv­ing their lives up to last night, based on proac­tive polic­ing”.

John said that the po­lice had re­ceived a re­port of gun­shots in the Har­bour Club area, lo­cat­ed to­wards the east­ern end of Kingstown, near the Grenadines Wharf and when of­fi­cers re­spond­ed,” they met four peo­ple who ap­peared to me dead and a fifth was trans­port­ed to the hos­pi­tal for med­ical at­ten­tion.

“At the end of the night, five per­sons were pro­nounced dead by the doc­tor,” John said.

They have been named as La­m­ont Hec­tor aka “Dutchie”, Ja­mal “Dut­ty” Bobb, Don­dre Hillocks; Ricky Tay­lor, who all died at the scene while 13-year-old stu­dent, Kashie Primus, died at hos­pi­tal.

Me­dia re­ports said that those who were found dead at the scene had bul­let wounds to their heads, as well as about their body.

This gives cre­dence to the the­o­ry that the as­sailants first opened fire with an as­sault weapon John said he had heard a voice note al­leg­ing that the killings were as a re­sult of a crim­i­nal in­ter­ac­tion be­tween peo­ple here and over­seas and sug­gest­ing that more shoot­ings would take place.

“Well, I have heard the voice note. And we are fol­low­ing all leads. This in­ves­ti­ga­tion is in its in­fan­cy at this stage. And we are fol­low­ing every lead. So, it’s some­thing that we are check­ing out,” John said.

“Based on the crime scene, an as­sault weapon ap­pears to have been used. And as I said, notwith­stand­ing that, I can guar­an­tee that per­sons in St. Vin­cent are gen­er­al­ly safe,” John said, adding that nowhere in the world is to­tal­ly safe, hence his “pro­vi­so that gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, we’re safe.

“We’ll have the iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents as it was, and we’re nowhere triv­i­al­is­ing it. And we are con­cerned about per­sons’ feel­ings and per­son’s per­cep­tion, hence, the po­lice, we are putting things in place to al­lay those fears, and to mit­i­gate against those sit­u­a­tions oc­cur­ring in the fu­ture.”

He de­fend­ed the po­lice against crit­i­cisms that it was slow to re­act to the shoot­ing, say­ing that a se­nior of­fi­cer re­spond­ed quick­ly to the scene and was “able to give us per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion as to what may have tran­spired at the time”.

Me­dia re­ports said that a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer, who was rel­a­tive­ly close by, heard the gun­shots and was about to re­spond to the scene when a white ve­hi­cle in which the as­sailants are be­lieved to have been trav­el­ling, came speed­ing down the road.

The of­fi­cer gave chase in his pri­vate ve­hi­cle but is said to have lost the ve­hi­cle af­ter a minibus swung in­to the traf­fic, — pre­sum­ably in­ad­ver­tent­ly — caus­ing the ve­hi­cle to es­cape.

John did not dis­close whether the po­lice had iden­ti­fied or tak­en in­to cus­tody the ve­hi­cle that was seen and filmed dri­ving away from the scene im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the shoot­ing. “Well, that is some­thing that I will not di­vulge at this mo­ment. Sor­ry.”

There have al­so been shoot­ings in dif­fer­ent parts of the is­land over re­cent months, and John said “yes, some of them that are linked to each oth­er”.

He said that the homi­cides across the coun­try are “at var­i­ous stages of in­ves­ti­ga­tion, based on the ev­i­dence that we have, the state­ments that we have so far. The process will be, once we col­lect the state­ments, we’ll dis­cuss it with the of­fice of the DPP and the DPP would give us ad­vice or opin­ion as to the way for­ward.”

He said po­lice of­fi­cers would be more vis­i­ble on the streets and the pub­lic might en­counter some in­con­ve­niences as a re­sult.

“But we ask per­sons to un­der­stand and we al­so ask per­sons with in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to this mass mur­der to come for­ward and pro­vide po­lice with in­for­ma­tion. The po­lice, with all of its tech­nol­o­gy and in­tel, can­not solve crime on its own,” he added.

The killings Wednes­day night brought the homi­cide count this year to 35, sev­en of which were record­ed in the last 36 hours.

“It is not a good sta­tis­tic. And the po­lice, we have gone back to the draw­ing board. We have looked at ways in which we can im­prove what we are do­ing. We have im­ple­ment­ed cer­tain poli­cies with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

I will not go in­to the de­tails as re­gards them at this mo­ment,” he said, adding that crim­i­nals might al­so be lis­ten­ing to the press con­fer­ence.

“But I just want to give the pub­lic the as­sur­ance that St. Vin­cent is a safe place, notwith­stand­ing what has tak­en place.”

KINGSTOWN, St. Vin­cent, Jul 21, CMC –

CMC/kc/ir/2023