Police in St. Vincent and the Grenadines say the country’s residents are safe despite a spate of killings that has taken the homicide count to 53.
The assurance came from acting Commissioner of Police Enville Williams, even as the country had witnessed several brazen shootings and six murders in December and hours before it recorded the latest killing.
With five days remaining in 2024, the homicide count, at 53, is just two less than the record 55 recorded last year.
Of those 53, police have classified 50 as murders, with the other three being people killed by police officers in the line of duty.
The latest murder victim is Kevin Hamilton, 30, who was gunned down in Roseau, Sion Hill on Dec. 16, hours after Williams sought to assure the public that they were safe.
Speaking at a press conference earlier that day, the acting police chief was asked about the theories that police were working with regarding the high murder rate.
“… most of them, the investigation is ongoing, and police are still trying, in some cases, … to find out, or figure out what is the motive …” Williams said.
He added that most killings are pointing to “disagreement between persons who can’t seem to come up with ways of settling their disputes, and they resort to the gun or the knife to get what they term as their justice”.
iWitness News noted that people always have personal differences and asked Williams if the differences were over things for which they cannot go to the police.
“Well, difference, I will say. But the issue is, whatever caused that difference in the first case, they can’t arrive at a place where they can settle that difference amicably.”
He said that there might be issues based on illegal activity.
“But as I said before, for most of these offences, the police are still trying to pin down from a concrete standpoint a motive that will cause somebody to react the way they reacted.”
iWitness News pointed out to the police chief the disturbing circumstances of some of the killings, for instance, that of Osborne Glasgow aka Soca, 63, who burglars shot and killed during an invasion of his home in Harmony Hall on June 26.
“The theory for that particular one is robbery. … it was a robbery that went wrong,” Williams said.
Other brazen killings in the country this year, including that of Ekron Edwards, a 33-year-old minibus driver and resident of Ottley Hall, who a masked assailant shot and killed while he driving a minibus in Ottley Hall on June 30.
On Sept. 13, around 2 p.m., Sanga Fraser, 45, was standing in the doorway of a shop talking to a friend in Paul’s Avenue when a gunman, wearing sunglasses and a wig as a disguise, shot him multiple times in the torso, resulting in his death.
And, on Nov. 15, around 9 a.m., Cornelius Hacksaw aka Brent, who is originally from Questelles but was living in Arnos Vale, was gunned down on the Young Island dock, located in the country tourism belt in Villa, with the killer allegedly leaving a sign saying, “when u owe PAY!”.
In July 2023, after a shooting that claimed five lives, the worst mass murder in the country’s recent history, then-police chief Colin John said police intelligence suggested that the majority of the killings in the country were over a drug transaction that went wrong in 2014, turning friends into foes.
At the press conference this month, Williams, who was assistant commissioner of police (ACP) with responsibility for crime fighting when John was police chief, said he would “not venture to doubt how the previous commissioner got that hypothesis”.
He said it is important that investigators come up with “a concrete motive that will withstand really rigorous tests of a trial”.
The justice system in St. Vincent and the Grenadines does not require prosecutors to prove motive to secure a murder conviction.
Williams said the relatives of people who were killed do not want the police to take someone to court with a case that is not strong and the person is freed.
“So, it is our job to pin down all the relevant facts and circumstances that will cause the person to be convicted of the offence that he’s charged for. So, establishing motive is paramount,” Williams said.
“So, yes, we might suspect something’s happening, but suspecting one thing and proving something is another. That is why it is important that we fully investigate and come to a conclusion of what might have motivated Tom Jones to take the life of Mary Jane, and that we can prove that motive in court that will lead to his or her conviction.”
But iWitness News told the police chief that the questions were to determine the extent to which people could feel safe moving around St. Vincent in light of some of the recent killings.
These included Jarvis Horne aka “Smadd Dan”, 28, of Fairbaine Pasture, a sanitation worker who died after being shot in the head and again in the torso at close range while sweeping the street in Rose Place around 6:30 p.m. on
Williams said:
“Let me answer this way. I want to give the assurance to the Vincentian public that the police are doing all that we can to ensure your safety and the rest of society.
“I’m going back to the motive, the motive question… When I spoke, I was saying that we need to come up with ways to diffuse situations and it starts perhaps in the communities, in the schools, in the church, to teach our young men and women ways in which they settle their differences.
“Because, too often and until we can establish a particular motive, … for that crime, then the working theory will still be that people don’t know how to settle the differences without resorting to violence.
“People don’t know how to come to the police or access somebody in society who can mediate on their behalf so that they can sit down together, trash out what is humbugging them, what is bothering them, and come to a settlement without resorting to violence.
“And that is what we are saying. We need to come from a societal standpoint where we know how we settle interpersonal differences … Because if we don’t have that mechanism to settle those differences, then we resort to everything else to settle the dispute.”
Speaking at the same press conference, Christopher Benjamin, ACP in charge of police operations, said young men in SVG are “developing a foreign culture of gangster mentality, where they feel that they must settle the difference by guns and bullets.
“It’s frightening. That’s what made policing very difficult. So that’s something else to think about.”
SVG recorded 52 homicides in 2023 and 42 in 2022, each year surpassing the previous record.
What ? Seriously?
Motive? Seems to me that the sticking point for law enforcement is not motive as much as it is willing witnesses. Maybe motive is more relevant in understanding why witnesses are not willing. Maybe it really is better to focus on climate change….