RSVGPF must find better strategies to fight crime
The Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines recorded its 36th homicide over the weekend, and the islands’ Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves stated that the police force (RSVGPF) must do more to combat the crime problem.
On November 5, two young men were shot and killed in the settlement of Redemption Sharpes, just one mile from the capital, Kingstown.
Gonsalves speaking on state radio that he has informed Police Commissioner Colin John that monitoring must be enhanced because there is a lack of actionable intelligence regarding some crimes.
“There is still an insufficiency of actionable intelligence in relation to certain crimes, and that has to be reviewed.” The commissioner knows this, and everybody in the police force knows this. You can’t fight crime just with force, you know, from the police standpoint. “You have to have the intelligence to try as much as possible to stay ahead of the curve,” the Prime Minister stated.
Gonsalves stated that sometimes, with really good, actionable intelligence, it is possible to prevent a murder.
“You may be able to stop a murder. You may be able to stop a burglary because we have seen that and we have used intelligence before on an ongoing basis to stop crimes.” “But we need to step up our intelligence, and there are ways in which we can do so,” Gonsalves said.
“I’m not talking about electronic surveillance; there are other forms of intelligence; I’m talking human-form intelligence, which we can ramp up to help us better tackle crime,” the Prime Minister said.
Gonsalves stated that the police had made intelligence advancements, but that more must be done.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines ranks eighth in the world for homicides, at 36.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to data from Worldpopulationreview.com.
