With five people killed by guns on Wednesday night in the capital city of Kingstown, Observers say crime on the island is approaching crisis levels, as murders in July already account for 12 of the 35 murders for 2023 so far.
The 35 killings bring SVG closer to shattering the 2022 record of 42 murders.
St. Vincent’s Police Commissioner Colin John said in a report on Thursday morning that At about 8:00 p.m. on July 19, 2023, the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force responded to a report of a mass shooting in the Harbour Club area of Kingstown. Investigations reveal that five (5) people were fatally wounded.
“The public is reassured that despite the regrettable spate of violence that we are currently experiencing in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, SVG is still a safe place”, John stated.
Before Wednesday night’s killings, two people were murdered on Tuesday, July 18: 29-year-old Kingsley Shallow and Kimron Roberts.
While the police reported that Vincy Mass was generally incident-free, five murders occurred on the island during the celebratory period.
On July 1, a shooting in Greiggs left Osborne Haywood dead; he was shot in the face. On July 3rd, Darius Williams was stabbed to death in Kingstown, while another man was killed in Georgetown.
On July 9, Phyllis Knights was found in her home at Dorsetshire Hill, chopped to death.
On July 6th, a police officer shot and killed Ravito Llewellyn Jr., a 24-year-old resident of Sion Hill/Fairbairn Pasture.
According to Commissioner John’s report from Thursday morning, a very small group of people typically commit serious crimes against other individuals of the same caliber.
At a Regional Symposium: Violence as a Public Health Issue meeting in Trinidad, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said among the many reasons some young males commit violent crimes is that ‘they associate with young women… in some cases, beautiful young women who are high maintenance, and they have to rob, steal, kill, and deal with drugs in order to maintain them.
On Thursday night, John advised people to settle their differences in a more mature, civilized, and amicable manner.
How is crime being combated?
Other than increased patrols, increased stop and search, and the hiring of more law enforcement officers, authorities claim the police have implemented a number of measures that the public is unaware of to combat the worsening outlook.
On state radio in November 2022, Prime Minister Gonsalves stated that he had told Police Commissioner Colin John that monitoring needed to be increased because there wasn’t enough useful information about 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. From the perspective of the police, you can’t fight crime solely with force. “You have to have the intelligence to try as much as possible to stay ahead of the curve,” the Prime Minister stated.
On December 18, 2022, speaking on WEFM, a privately owned radio station, Gonsalves said that while governments could be tough on crime and on the causes of crime, they lacked a “magic bullet” to end criminal activity.
“Everyone should take an interest in the fight against crime.” “I’m requesting that everyone do their part to reduce crime, including families, parents, schools, and churches.”
According to PM Gonsalves, fighting crime in SVG requires a “total society approach.”
Prime Minister Gonsalves, who is also the Minister of National Security, added on December 18, 2022, that people are not easily deterred from committing murder due to the unconstitutionality of mandatory death sentences and the lack of electronic monitoring of criminals.
With the island population urging the government to implement a variety of measures to stem the crime wave, it remains to be seen if assistance will be sought from foreign agencies, as in the recent cases of St. Lucia and Jamaica.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines ranks seventh in the world for homicides, at 36.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to data from worldpopulationreview.com.
