Minister of Local Government, Sen. Julian Francis on Tuesday stood by his comments from a week earlier that most of the shooting deaths taking place in St. Vincent and the Grenadines are targeted.
Twelve persons have been killed, eight of them as a result of shooting, while a further four have been injured since Sept. 1, bringing the homicide count this year to 33 – seven shy of the record-breaking 40 recorded in 2016.
But Francis, speaking on his weekly radio programme on Star FM last week Tuesday, Sept. 26, suggested that innocent persons have nothing but stray bullets to fear.
He was criticised in some circles, including by Opposition Leader Godwin Friday and Member of Parliament for Central Kingstown, St. Clair Leacock for his comments.
But speaking on radio this past Tuesday night, Francis stood by his comments.
“They know everybody wants to say it but everybody seems to afraid to say it, but when somebody says it, it seems as if it is coming out the wrong way,” he told listeners.
“Well, if you want to comment on an issue, you have to have your own views, you have to have some information and you have to follow the trend of things and you make a reasonable presentation on it, which I think I handled fairly well last week.”
He said there was a lot of deliberate misinterpretation of statements.
“But the fundamentals of the situation were touched on: gang violence and revenge killings and turf war and family feuds,” he said, adding that he didn’t touch too much on domestic violence.
“I think we really need to bring the curtains down on men getting involved in this sort of thing,” the senator said, adding that “high end” men are also involved in domestic abuse.
Returning to the subject of the most recent killings, Francis said:
“When the brother of the guy who last got shot, which I believe his name is Grindy, when Grindy’s brother was shot, the guy who shot Grindy’s brother walked deliberately to Grindy’s brother and shot him. Meant he prepared himself, walked with a gun and went to look for him and shot him.
“He was not going to look for innocent people and he wasn’t going to spray down a whole set ah place to kill innocent people. That is the point I was trying to make,” Francis said.
Wendel “Grindy” O’Neil was shot and killed in Kingstown on Sept. 26, one day after the death of Irone Bascombe in Vermont, who Grindy is said to have shot and killed.
Grindy’s girlfriend, Jihan Browne, and one Kevin Isaacs were also injured when the gunman opened fire just outside the Leeward Bus Terminal around 2 p.m.
Francis, however, did not say whether he thought the two injured persons were innocent victims.
Bascombe was shot and killed four days after his alleged murder of Grindy’s brother, Raphael Snaky O’Neil in Vermont on Sept. 22.
Another man, Jason Stephens, also known as Godfred Straker, was injured during that shooting, but the minister also did not comment on him.
“And the man who killed Grindy’s brother was killed by Grindy. And when Grindy went, Grindy went specifically for the guy who killed his brother. He didn’t go with a gun and just spray it like the fella in Las Vegas last night or night before — spray it down and shoot down a whole set ah innocent people who went to a concert,” Francis said.
“Specific persons are named and intended to be hit. And that’s the point I was making and I will put it as raw as that. So that after Grindy had done his work and the guy who came in town, I am told that is an AK-47 he brought in town in a tinted car that doesn’t’ have a recognised licence plate — based on the reports you hear coming out in the media.
“He went specifically for Grindy. He didn’t go for any innocent person inside of Little Tokyo or on the seawall of Little Tokyo,” Francis said.
That is the point I was making last week. So I want to make it clearer for you, and I’m not putting on any jacket on it. I am not putting on an umbrella or socks on it. I am not clothing it in any other language but that straight language. That is the point I was bringing to you last week and it still stands. Those who want to disagree can do so,” he said.
By the time Francis’ programme ended after 10 p.m., the homicide count in SVG would reach 33 with the shooting death of 34-year-old Belmont resident, Kenrick “Lamar” Scott, who was felled, execution-style, by a bullet to the head in Campden Park around 10 p.m.
Wow, Julian talking as if he was there. Seems like he done put the case together for the police. Politician, businessman, chief engineer and now detective. That’s a lot of hats Julian boy. Maybe they should let you give evidence in court.
Even if specific people are being targeted, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t reason for concern. The more people involved in criminal activity with access to guns, the more armed robberies there are likely to be and with robbery the chances of innocent people being killed increases.
It appears that murder gets the most attention but near misses like the following often go unnoticed or unreported.
http://www.svg-tv.com/2017/10/04/contractor-counting-lucky-stars-escaping-alleged-attempted-robbery/
To address this, we need to find ways to get the guns off the street and stop them from getting into the country. When the issue of escalating crime comes up we often downplay it by comparing ourselves to countries that are as bad or worse than we are but fail to notice that there are places that are better. We should look to those and seek to determine what accounts for the difference.
We are treading dangerous ground. What we get is what we choose to accept.
I presume, Mr. Minister, you are saying the folks who got shot and killed that their killings were justified and targeted, therefore, the general public should not be too concern, except to stay away from stray bullets. Do you really think that’s a good statement or inference to send to our people, instead of making suggestions on ways we can curb the violence in our country? Is that the best you can do? How incompetent and insensitive!
It seems as if the Senator is trying to put a brave face on the recent homicide in St Vincent. To the extent that it sounds like he is providing justification for certain homicide. If the ULP can govern effectively and cannot provide security for its citizens, them they may as well vacate the very office that they occupy.
Soon svg will have more guns than people. please close your mouth and try and do something about it. Send the police men to hunt for these guns . They were one time terrorizing innocent people who were demoninstrating, which is there constitutional rights, even their pot was seized. Go and seized these guns.
Francis is just being used as running decoy for Ralph. When the heat gets too close to Ralph and his poor leadership Julian gets taken out of the closet, dusted-off, wound-up and given the task of deflecting the issue to get the heat off of Ralph. We see this over and over again. They start pointing the blame for whatever the issue to everywhere but Ralph. In this case the poor policy decisions of Ralph is like a chicken come home to roost. Because Ralph has been spending years spending, borrowing and raising taxes WITHOUT ANY PRIVATE SECTOR JOB CREATION, the squeeze and desperation of the people comes out more and more as time goes by.
The problem(s) are socio-economic and not because of “the bad hearts of men”. Until our “leadership” starts to focus on this instead of blaming everything else, the problem will continue. Even when and if they begin to do the right thing it will take years to correct because many in SVG have made crime a way of life, maybe even a part of our culture.
It is really annoying , to bundle News regarding “THE NEWS “dated APRIL 25
2012 ; & ALSO ” THE NEWS ” dated JULY 17; 2013 also with the ” NEWS ”
dated SEPTEMBER 28 , 2017 .
In my opinion this is not only extremely Poor Journalism , it is very misleading because these 3 stories are not connected to each other . I do not believe that there can be any sensible excuse for doing this except to
create mischief .
V .