SVG is eating its young

By *Jomo Sanga Thomas

(“Plain Talk” Dec. 13, 2024)

With 18 days left in 2024, our country will easily earn the title “killing fields of the Caribbean”. On Tuesday, Dec. 10, marked internationally as Human Rights Day, a man was shot and injured in Kingstown. He narrowly escaped becoming the 52nd homicide victim in our nation of just over 100,000 people. We are not just the killing capital of the Caribbean; we are galloping fast to become a very unsafe place to live.

Our government has proven unable to protect life, the most sacred possession of a people. Nothing it says or does resembles a sensible or meaningful approach to this damning problem. Its recurring mantra to be tough on crime and the causes of crime has proven meaningless as violent crime spirals out of control. If we take the government’s unreliable numbers, close to 500 Vincentians have perished violently since 2011. 

With 51 homicides for 2024, we are killing ourselves at more than one person per week. We are smashing homicide records year after year. In 2023, 55 persons lost their lives violently. The 2023 record overtook the 2022 record of 42 homicides by 30%. It’s an open question whether the 55 homicides recorded last year will remain standing come Dec. 31. Don’t bet on it. 

The killings remain targeted rather than random, but most frightening is the frequency with which mostly young men lose their lives and the increasingly brazen nature of the killers. The police remain woefully under-resourced. The government’s policy regarding policing appears to be directed at finding employment for young men and women rather than fighting crime. 

For years, the police high command has been clamouring for a forensic lab that may aid in crime detection and possible solutions. With the high incidents of rape and sexual assault in SVG, police officers are not equipped with rape kits that may help them to detect, obtain and protect evidence. At trials, you wait in vain for the prosecution to introduce scientific evidence that definitively ties the accused to crimes for which they are charged. Police stations nationwide function without vehicles, working telephones and toilets, broken windows, and inadequate bedding. 

It is small wonder then that without adequate training and armed with a gun, police officers routinely harass, disrespect, brutalise and shoot citizens, thus resulting in alienation from nationals they swear to protect and serve. The disconnect rather than a partnership between the security apparatus and citizens partially explains why few persons offer critically important information to crime fighters.  Like other persons in the public service, police officers are dedicated to the pay cheque rather than those they are paid to serve. Many use their job as a resume booster when applying for visas to the United States and Canada or for policing jobs elsewhere. 

We cannot solve crime if large swaths of our youthful population are not gainfully employed. We are creating fertile ground for crime when so many young men and women fall through the craters in our educational system. Young people have to be given a stake in the system. The official view that more jobs are available than persons willing to work is at the heart of our difficulties. The governing elite has convinced itself that it has done all it can.

The official claim that a small band of worthless men are resigned to a life of crime is short-sighted and counterproductive. For years, our political overlords actively entertained and encouraged the unproven notion that violent crime is not a problem. According to this discredited view, the criminal elements will kill off each other, thus allowing us to go back to peace and tranquillity. The last 10 years have demonstrated how wrong-headed our leaders are. The more young men shot and killed in the turf and drug wars, the more recruits. Young men are so impoverished that they kill for hire for a few hundred dollars. Others kill simply to belong.

Any serious government or security official knows that guns used to rob, shoot, kill and terrorise citizens are not manufactured here. Neither is the crack cocaine that fuels the jealousies and rivalries that inevitably lead to murder and mayhem across the land. 

We can bet our lives that there are some among the “respectable class” who bring in guns and drugs. Therefore, why does the security establishment target the small fry rather than the kingfish? 

The American Drug Enforcement Administration led an investigation that smashed a Bahamas drug ring involving senior police officers and implicating corrupt politicians. Eleven Bahamians were either arrested or indicted. They are accused of taking bribes to allow the use of Bahamas air and sea ports as transhipment points for cocaine smuggling. Two years ago, they broke up a similar ring in BVI that nabbed the premier. We doubt that our police and other public officials are clean. We know that cocaine regularly disappears from the evidence room, and no one pays a price with their jobs or jail time. We can be sure the stolen drugs end up on our streets and contribute to the corruption and destruction of citizens.

What happens to us? Until we start investigating and taking down the high and mighty politicians and senior police officers who may be benefiting from the drug and gun trade, youth may be fooled into believing that the deadly game of crime pays.

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].