Call for Barbadians to “take back our streets”

Editor: The Barbadian online newspaper, BARBADOS TODAY, has in its Editorial of last Friday, March 22, called on Barbadians to “take back” their streets.

The call came in the wake of what the paper calls “a brazen daytime shooting” inside the crowded Sheraton Centre mall, one of the busiest of its type in Barbados, in which a young man was shot to death, execution-style in full view of many shoppers. Just five days previously, masked men took the lives of a 53-year old woman and her 32-year old son.

The BARBADOS TODAY paper said that these murders have left the country “in shock” and described the execution at the Mall as taking the country “into dark, unc
hartered territory”.

In contrast to the images that many persons have of violent crime in the Caribbean being confined only to some territories – Jamaica, Trinidad and even, St Vincent, the murder rate throughout the region is reaching frightening levels. Barbados, once considered “safe” and “peaceful” is not untouched by it.

The daytime mall shooting, in full view of terrified customers and caught on closed-circuit television, took the murder toll in Barbados for 2019, in less than three months to 20. St Vincent and the Grenadines has recorded two murders so far this year.

Clearly this is a regional phenomenon which demands urgent attention.

Renwick Rose