The Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, held a three-hour meeting with the police high command and all gazetted officers over the weekend.
Gonsalves said the meeting reviewed what the police are doing currently, the current strategies and new initiatives that are to be taken on several different fronts, and an assessment of the resources that are required.
Gonsalves also said that a plan for getting illegal guns off the streets was talked about, and added that a nine-page document was made about this particular initiative.
“We reviewed not just the current strategies, but how we can strengthen the area of operations and intelligence gathering and analysis, our ongoing cooperation with regional and international agencies, including the regional security system, the CARICOM impacts, the Implementation Agency for Crime and Security in CARICOM, and our global friends with whom we have links on security questions, including those traditional ones, the United States, Britain, and Canada.”
“There was a full and frank discussion about many of the very good things that are being done by the police and areas of weakness.” We are very interested in ways to improve programs outside of traditional policing, particularly among young people, such as the PAN against Crime and police youth clubs, as well as the renewal of the National Commission on Crime Prevention”.
“I believe that we have had an excellent discussion. ” There are some matters that have to be submitted to me because of their urgency on certain things. I’m not going to talk in detail about operational issues. “I’m not going to talk in detail about some of the initiatives, the new ones, which are going to roll out.”
Gonsalves said there would have been increased patrols in some places of the country, but when you, quote, “lock down certain areas or have a very strong presence,” sometimes you have spillovers into other areas.
“Some people begin to use other theaters of activities, and those must be investigated. “I think that given the homicides that have already taken place in 2023, coming on the heels of what happened last year, this particular meeting was a very important one, and I’m sure that the commissioner and his entire top leadership would have been “reinvigorated.”
Gonsalves said It is the intention of the government always and the police force not to give the criminals any space whatsoever, stating that some discussion took place about the way in which some decisions are made, the actual decisions themselves in some instances in the Magistrates Court in which some of them puzzled the police and puzzle right thinking citizens.
“Of course, the judiciary is independent of the police and the executive, but it would have been strange for the kind of discussion we had if some of that discussion about some decisions had not occurred.” As I pointed out in that regard, we cannot interfere with those things. “There’s a judicial process, but I just want the public to know that the discussions ranged far and wide,” Gonsalves said.
