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Cops need
more firepower: Commissioner
Date Posted: June 11, 2008 by Patricia
Campbell - Antigua Sun.
Police
Commissioner Gary Nelson said his officers need additional
firepower if they are to safely address the upsurge in gun
crimes.
“My concern and it’s a growing concern with these gun crimes
is that my officers are responding to calls without weapons
(and) without body armour. And I don’t want to have an
officer shot or killed, responding to a gun call, because he
or she doesn’t have a weapon,” Nelson told the Antigua Sun
yesterday.
The commissioner was responding to a series of incidents in
the last two weeks in which gun-toting bandits have carried
out kidnappings and robberies.
Nelson said in light of the calibre of weapons in the hands
of criminals, the police officers also need body armour,
such as bulletproof vests. Some vests, which were in
storage, have been distributed to members of the force, but
the commissioner said he needs approximately 300 more for
each officer to have a vest.
He expressed dissatisfaction with what he described as an
old, unwritten policy that has effectively placed many of
the guns available to the police force in the hands of the
most senior officers, leaving few weapons available to the
police men and women who patrol the streets every day.
“When you are promoted to inspector you receive a handgun…
and there are a lot of constables and corporals on the
streets without handguns,” he said. “When I was here (for)
about a week and I said in the press, I’m not carrying a
weapon,a sergeant came to me and said, Sir, you have to
carry a weapon. I said, do you have a weapon? He said no, so
I said, when you have a weapon, I’ll get a weapon.”
The police commissioner said that he has already sought to
arrange to have additional weapons purchased for the police
force.
Nelson said he has also gone to retired police officers who
kept their guns and asked them to return those weapons so
that they can be available to officers on active duty. In
addition, the police force has requested the return of all
the weapons it lent out over the years to prosecutors,
judges and other officials. “I said, if you want them, you
buy them. I need weapons for my officers on the street. The
police force budget should not be providing weapons to other
people. If they want to, then they can pay for them. In law
enforcement, I need to have officers who have the proper
equipment on the street.”
Despite these concerns, the police commissioner made it
clear that his officers are responding to address and
curtail the criminal activities. Nelson said the recent
surge in robberies is reminiscent of the surge in hotel
robberies a few months ago, and that the police will respond
the same way they did in that instance.
“We put lots of teams out on the road at night and we
started randomly stopping all vehicles and just checking,
and that’s what we’re doing right now,” he said. Nelson told
the SUN that he hopes to get additional vehicles to help
implement what he described as “a huge cultural shift” in
the way policing is done in Antigua and Barbuda. Pointing
out that the force is about to receive a modern radio
communications system, the commissioner said he needs to
have vehicles in which those radios can be placed so that
officers can constantly be out on patrol.
“It’s going to be something different for the country that
officers are not going to be in the station waiting for a
call. They’re going to be out looking for calls. They’re
going to be out stopping cars with young males in it at
night, searching the cars, checking for weapons, checking
for guns. That is proactive policing and we’re moving in
that direction,” he said.
Police
Commissioner Gary Nelson said his officers need additional
firepower if they are to safely address the upsurge in gun
crimes.