Youths are being attracted to ‘get rich quick’ life

“We need educational programmes to help in demand reduction.” This is the opinion of Grantley Watson, Regional Security Systems (RSS) Coordinator, addressing the concern that many of the region’s youths are being attracted to the “get rich quick” life of drug trafficking.

Watson spoke to SEARCHLIGHT while he attended the RSS’s security chiefs’ meeting last Monday, June 26 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Conference Room.{{more}}

The meeting saw the coming together of police commissioners and other law enforcement heads from member states from within the RSS.

Watson admitted that the drug trade presents a very attractive option to youths with the tantalizing promise of quick wealth but will not concede that there is nothing that could be done. The former Barbadian police officer of 40 years experience told SEARCHLIGHT that if there is an aggressive educational campaign throughout the region, many of our youths can be saved from the deceptive trap of the drug trade.

As regards extending the scope of the RSS to include other Caribbean territories, namely Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica, Watson admitted that efforts to get them on board have failed. He said that the RSS is now seeking to organize a formal intelligence and security arrangement with the non-RSS Caribbean states even though they do work together in an informal way.

Watson, who served as the top cop in Barbados for eight years, told SEARCHLIGHT that although the United States has withdrawn their financial support for the RSS’s C-26 flight operations, which monitors the action of criminal elements within the RSS’s member states, he is hopeful that this support will return in the not-too-distant future.

The United States withdrawal was a direct retaliation to Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ decision not to sign the article 98 waver exempting the USA from persecution in the International Criminal Court.