Barbados and other Caricom countries will be getting more support from INTERPOL, the world’s largest police organisation, as they intensify efforts against crime and violence.
CARICOM chair, Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness, said regional leaders met with INTERPOL Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza during the 49th Heads Meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica, over the last few days and that the organisation was “committed to strengthening cooperation and expanding access to its global resources”.
“A secure CARICOM is a viable CARICOM and as such security remains high on the agenda for the duration of my chairmanship and beyond,” Holness said as he also announced that Heads “adopted The Montego Bay Declaration On Transnational Organised Crime And Gangs, underscoring our united stance against criminal networks”.
Holness said that while in the past the issue of serious crime may have been seen as a Jamaica problem, “now it is a regional problem, and all heads have to be addressing it”.
He welcomed the expected increased support from INTERPOL.
“INTERPOL is the premier global policing organisation. They have incredible resources. They have massive databases which can be of use to us in dealing with this organised criminal enterprise, and therefore, we are exploring ways to intensify,” the CARICOM chair said.
“We do have a very strong relationship with INTERPOL, but we’re looking at ways to intensify that. And more than that, we are also sharing with other countries in the region. We’ve put on a mini security expo to show other countries in the region what Jamaica is doing and how what we’re doing could be replicated in their own space,” he said on Tuesday during the closing press conference of the CARICOM meeting.
Multifaceted
Holness said crime and violence “is multifaceted and multidimensional .
. . and having had to deal with the problem for the last almost ten years, I’ve come to the conclusion, by virtue of the evidence that I see every day, that a large part of crime and violence is organised, it has intelligence, finance and some structured administration behind it”.
“There is somebody planning, somebody accounting, somebody keeping records, somebody checking what is happening, somebody making connections, and we have not dealt with it for the sophistication that is behind it,” he said.
“Now, the truth is that if you were to look at every . . . murder committed in the region, maybe 70 per cent or more could be ascribed to an organised use of violence which ended up in the ultimate loss of life.
“If that is the case, we have to restructure our society. We have to restructure our police force to deal with this. We have to retrain them. We have to train their doctrine. We have to give them the right equipment. We have to give them the intelligence capability. We have to look at our legislative framework. We have to look at the judicial prudence that is employed to deal with this, because that’s the nature of the problem,” said Holness.
He added: “We have to also consider it an emergency, because if it is left unattended, then you see the ultimate result of that, which is a state being threatened to be overtaken by gangs, which is Haiti.” (SC)
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