Acting Assistant Commissioner of Police Trevor “Buju” Bailey says no forensic examinations would be conducted on firearms handed in to police during the pending gun amnesty.
“If we are running an amnesty, we are running an amnesty. So it will be foolhardy of me and my organisation to say we are doing an amnesty and we are asking people to turn in their firearms and say well every firearm that you turn in we are going to be checking, we are going to be running ballistics. Who is going to bring them? We are doing an amnesty. An amnesty is an amnesty,” he said on Hot 97 FM on Thursday.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves announced in October that his government will soon have a gun amnesty, which would be followed by harsher punishment for firearm offences.
He said that the details of the amnesty would be worked out in conjunction with the police.
On Thursday, Bailey said whether an amnesty is viewed as successful depends on perspective.
The senior cop said that if an amnesty is conducted for 60 days and during that time eight pistols are handed in, law enforcement would consider it a success.
“A pistol can carry 12 to 15 rounds … You see the amount of lives that can be lost with these eight guns? You may say, ‘Well we’re having 47 murders in a year, eight guns, that is nothing.’
“Because the impression to you is that you may figure there are hundreds of guns on the street and eight guns, mathematically, is not a pass mark.”
Bailey said the police force wants people to feel comfortable that during the amnesty they can hand over the illegal firearms to the police.
“We want persons … if they figure that Pastor Haynes is somebody that he or she has confidence in they can go to Pastor Haynes and say, ‘Here is my illegal firearm’,” he said, adding that the police would then go and retrieve the firearm.
Asked what kind of people would hand in an illegal firearm to the police, Bailey said that two weeks four firearms — to brand new Glock pistols, a shotgun and a 38 pistol — were handed over to the police “by persons of questionable character.
“They handed them in so I will not say that persons who do shootings will not hand in firearms.”
Bailey speculated that the persons who handed in the firearms might have searched their consciences and examined their lifestyles and seen that “in the long run badness doesn’t pay”.
He said that many people portray a badman lifestyle “but sometimes what you portray comes back to you.
“At some point, you have to assess and say, ‘This is not the right path that I am on.'”
Bailey said that he feels that having assessed their current situation and affiliations, the persons decided that that lifestyle was not for them.
“‘I have lost a lot of friends, I have seen people who I have known, who I have grown with, who I have gone to school with have gone to the great beyond by means of the gun’ and they just decided that enough is enough,” he said.
Trevor Buju Bailey is at it again with respect to his statement made about the gun amnesty. He stated that the police and the men under him have no desire to carry out ballistic rest of guns handed over to the police department during the gun amnesty. However, the public has a vested interest in knowing whether or not a gun in the police custody was used in ghe commission of a crime.
Charging someone with a crime and obtaining statistical information are opposite end of the spectrum. Trevor Buju Bailey does not understand this.His statement is not only illogical, but makes no intuitive sense. In the eyes of the public, Trevor Bailey is not the smartest animal on the farm.His rudimentary education is telling. The public is still in awe with respect to the execution of villager “Rat”.
How about ghe execution of “Rabbit”.