(BROOKLYN, New York): CARIBBEAN TIMES NEWS can report that police have admitted that there is “a new wave of fear” which has enveloped Barbados, but they have given the assurance that though murders have risen by 200 per cent for the first two months of the year, there is no crime crisis in the island.
“We do not believe that we are in a crime crisis,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Erwin Boyce said recently. “Twelve murders in the first two months of the year 2019 is unprecedented and with over 15 reported incidences of shootings, evidence is there that criminal behavior is no longer a closeted activity.”
Speaking during a National Strategic Consultation on the Social Response to Crime at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Center, the senior police officer said there is some cause for concern as he gave statistics that showed incidences of serious crimes were actually down when compared to 2018.
“There is no doubt that there is a new boldness in committing crime, a boldness tied more particularly to the accessibility of firearms and a lower level of gang activities. The force acknowledges that notwithstanding the fact that reported serious crime rates have fallen in the past years, the majority of the public still feels that crime is on the increase. We accept that the public is not basing their views on stats, but on what they experience and what they see happening around them. For us, we recognize there is a new wave of fear and anxiety that prevails in society, ” he added.
His comments came just hours before the shooting death of 35-year-old Shane Brathwaite at St Martins, St Philip. A second shooting death occurred in Black Rock. Boyce said overall, major crime was down 21 per cent when compared to the same period in 2018.
Drawing from data gathered as of February 23, 2019, he said there had been 12 murders to date compared to four murders for the same period last year. Seven of those murders had already been solved, he said.
He added major crime included murder, manslaughter, robbery, endangering life, serious bodily harm, aggravated burglary, commercial burglary, residential burglary and sexual offences including rape. The Deputy Commissioner said while there had been a significant increase in the number of murders, those statistics only accounted for one per cent of total reported crimes for the period.
He said rape and aggravated burglaries accounted for less than one per cent, robberies accounted for three per cent, residential burglaries 12 per cent, while other crimes including drugs, assaults and woundings accounted for 78 per cent. Additionally, he said there had been 60 less serious crimes for the year.
Boyce said evidence had also shown that the majority of crimes had been committed in the Bridgetown division, which covered St Michael and parts of Christ Church. The senior police official however, said the force was concerned with the manner in which social media was being used to lure young women.
“We’ve seen not any major rise in sexual offences, in particular in stranger driven rapes, but we have noticed that social media plays an integral role in most reported sexual offences committed against young girls. They hook up on the social media, they meet and then they are forced into what can be considered date rape sex,” Boyce said, while pointing out that child sex offending continued to be “a thorn in the flesh”.
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