Grenada Govt moving to tighten legislation against gun crimes
Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell has indicated his desire to introduce legislation to address the rise in criminal activity in Grenada, notably gun-related offences.
He told a news conference on Tuesday that while crime in Grenada “has been trending downwards,” gun-related offences were on the rise.
“In total, we have 18 homicides for the year, many of which are gun-related, and as I have repeatedly stated, firearms are lethal, they are designed to kill, and I daresay that if firearms had not been involved in some of these cases, some of the victims may very well have survived.”
“We intend to take a very robust response to this, and the Cabinet intends to pilot legislation to amend the Firearms Act to introduce far more significant penalties for persons found in unlawful possession of a firearm,” said Mitchell, a lawyer.
“We certainly intend to file the necessary legislation before we go on the Christmas break…so that it could be enacted into law to signal our view that the possession of unlawful firearms, the use of unlawful firearms, and the trading in unlawful firearms will not be something that will be tolerated,” he said.
Mitchell also stated that the government has chosen a national security advisory council and that the council will be formed “and the first order of business it will be mandated to do is to carry out a series of national consultations, which we hope to begin in October.”
He stated that the consultations will enable for a comprehensive examination of national security as well as the execution of programs aimed at ensuring that “as a nation, we do not use violence to conduct ourselves or to resolve our disputes.”
“We intend to back this up by contracting with a specialist” in the field of behavioral science, he said, adding that “one of the clear things that’s obvious is that the perpetrators and the victims oftentimes know each other.”
Prime Minister Mitchell also stated that the government will form a project team to advise it on the installation of CCTV cameras in key public sites on the island.
He stated that the government already has the cameras and that his administration will make a concerted effort to spend more in the Coast Guard.
“We certainly recognize that we do not manufacture firearms in Grenada, and they are clearly entering Grenada from elsewhere.” We continue to work with our regional and North American colleagues to figure out how to stop the flow of firearms into Grenada and the region.
“Once they get into the region, we are vulnerable to the risk of it getting into Grenada,” Mitchell said. “In many cases, the firearm trade is tied with the narcotics trade, and it is also a significant challenge for us because, while we help many of our partners to stem the flow of narcotics to the north, we need to make sure that they are working assiduously with us to stem the flow of arms to the south and into our respective countries.”
Grenada police stated last Tuesday that they were not ruling out the possibility of cross-border criminal activity after a 51-year-old St. Vincent and the Grenadines man was shot and died while sitting in his vehicle.
Superintendent Esau Pierre, the newly appointed head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), stated at a press conference regarding the murder of Dexter Chance, “that because Grenada has porous borders, one can never eliminate the possibilities and movement of persons connected to the underworld.”
“As a result, we will always be on high alert…in terms of cross-border criminality.” In this particular situation, we are continuing our investigations and will identify where the assailants came from.
“However, our investigations will reveal the information later.” But I can’t say if it’s local or regional at this point, but it’s a concern for us where criminality is imported, and firearms are imported,” Pierre said during the news conference.
