Still at peace

Minister Lane says previously warring groups sticking to treaty By Sheria Brathwaite Minister of State in the Office of the Attorney General with responsibility for Crime Prevention Corey Lane is assuring the public that the truce between the major gangs on the island has not been broken. He insisted that violent acts in recent weeks were isolated events and had no bearing on the agreement signed by 200 men from different blocks and communities in The City in early March. “The peace truce is still in place and still going so the communities are working with each other. I want to remind Barbados the peace truce was really about two major warring factions that were really retaliating against each other, committing homicide sometimes three times a week in this country. That is not what we are seeing. “What we are seeing is isolated incidents and we still have to work to prevent those things and that work will continue,” Lane told the media following the Westbury Primary School graduation service at St Leonard’s Anglican Church on Tuesday. Over the past weeks, lawmen have reported incidents of shootings and gun-related deaths. Lane said that he and his team had been working assiduously since November 2022 – the month after he was appointed to his position – to reduce crime, and they were taking a direct approach to address the scourge. “In the past, people did a lot of indirect intervention which [are] things such as banners and public campaigns through T-shirts. I have taken the deliberate approach to do more direct intervention. I have a set of field officers called change agents in the most vulnerable communities every day, and what they are doing is working with the young people, those predisposed to crime and those at high risk that are committing crime already. “I have purposely [done this] because over the years, I have recognised that we’ve done a lot of tokenistic things that will have some minimum results. But I am satisfied so far with what we are doing and I am more than excited about the possibilities the future holds in terms of when these programmes really take root,” Lane said, adding that initiatives to steer youth away from crime had to be implemented at an early age. The minister also addressed the hooliganism at last weekend’s Powda fete at the Vaucluse Raceway, St Thomas, when scores of people climbed over the perimeter fence to get into the event. There were also multiple fights and several vendors’ stalls were damaged, including a mobile canteen which was destroyed by fire. “If you look at the recent incident of Powda and you look at the faces of the individuals in that, they look like they’re in their 20s and they look like they’re in their 30s. So when people ask me, I’m leading a programme for the last several months [and what I have to show], they understand that there’s a disconnect between the ages, meaning that we now got work to do. “When people decide to break the law, they may have to find themselves in prison. But it is my role and my job to make sure that I get them in programmes before they . . . end up in prison. “The other thing is also to work with these 11-year-olds that graduated today and the ones that are in preschool to make sure that when they get 20 and 30 years old they don’t display that type of behaviour that we saw at Powda,” Minister Lane said. As it relates to the spate of robberies over the past few weeks, he said that, in general, major reports of criminal activity were still low. “We’ve still maintained a reduction in major reports. Therefore, you will notice an increase in smaller reports of robberies and so on. I believe that we are on the right path in relation to the work we are doing in crime prevention. We have set up [a line of] communication with those on the streets and about three/four weeks ago, they would have indicated to us that these are things that we might be seeing. They pointed out what can be some of the determinants of these things. “What we have found is that they said to us that there are some persons among them that are not prepared to work . . . . Some people sell some punches, some people import clothes and sell them, but there are some who are not prepared to do that. And that’s where you will see these robberies,” Lane said. Against that background, he added that programmes were being put in place within the family and at the community level to help foster an entrepreneurial drive. sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb]]>