A country’s approach to crime must be similar to its approach to a public health crisis.
Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley expressed this as she delivered remarks during the opening ceremony of the Hastings/Worthing Police Station recently.
“We need to be able to pause in this society, in every society across the region and let the region understand that the incidence of violence among us is now a genuine public health disorder that requires the same approach as the fight against the coronavirus, that requires the same approach as the fight against diabetes and as the fight against heart difficulties and problems,” she said.
“In this instance we have to work together to be able to start to pull back those cultural things that have led us to this point.”
She reported that for January 2020, Jamaica recorded 110 murders, Trinidad and Tobago recorded 46 murders, Guyana recorded 15, and St. Lucia and Barbados recorded three.
It is against this backdrop that the Prime Minister believes that crime is a regional problem, and if the individual nations continued to fight this separately, the problem would not be solved.
She stressed that the Caribbean Sea could not be a zone of peace while the Caribbean land was an area of warfare, adding that she did not think it was fair for the citizens of the Caribbean to consider if going to a certain place was safe due to the actions of those who had access to weaponry.
She assured that until they reached the point of fighting crime together, Barbados’ Government would not waiver when it came to protecting the country, especially the country’s borders.
In addition to that, she assured that a proper fleet management policy for vehicles will be discussed as she believed that the Royal Barbados Police Force deserved a proper fleet.
“We thought that we introduced this policy years ago, only to find that it has been abandoned. I’ve asked the AG and Minister of Finance to reintroduce that policy because it is the only way that we are going to ensure that we have a proper rolling fleet for you to be able to have adequate response times and be able to protect your own officers who may need to move out very quickly,” she said.
