Crime situation unacceptable – Dr Friday

Opposition Leader, Dr Godwin Friday has said that the crime situation in St Vincent and the Grenadines is unacceptable.

“That is just simply unacceptable,” Dr Friday said in an interview on Hot 97 on Thursday, July 20.

He was speaking mere hours after a shooting incident in Kingstown which left five persons, including a 13 year old male dead.

The leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) said the crime situation seems to be getting worse every day, and that Thursday night’s mass shooting was unprecedented.

Apart from considering the situation to be unacceptable, Dr Friday said “it creates fear in our people.”

The Northern Grenadines Member of Parliament (MP) said that he passed by the scene of the murders, and the mother of one of the victims was there crying.

“The blood is still on the ground; vehicles driving through it,” Dr Friday lamented.

He said the murder scene at Upper Bay Street in Kingstown, is “one that would shock the conscience of anyone.”

With 35 homicides so far for the year in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Friday said “this is a crisis,” and “there is fear and insecurity among our people”.

“The people in this country are retreating into their homes; they are afraid to go to public places,” Friday remarked.

He added that Vincentians are now at a place where they have lost faith in the institutions that are there to protect them.

Speaking on the NDP’s New Times programme on Wednesday, July 19, the party’s vice president, Nigel ‘Nature’ Stephenson also expressed concern about the crime situation.

“Right now, fear stalks the land,” Stephenson told listeners.

The South Leeward MP said crime in St Vincent and the Grenadines “cannot continue unabated; crime has to stop.”

With many of the perpetrators and victims of crime being young people, Stephenson said “it is a lot cheaper to invest in our young people than to feed and house criminals.”

In a video posted to social media earlier this week, the NDP’s other vice president St Clair Leacock, also weighed in on the crime situation.

In calling for something to be done about crime, Leacock said “we are uncomfortable, we are distraught and our hands are in the air.”