St. Kitts Implementing new Measures to Tackle Crime

NEW YORK, Jun 07 2015, CNS – The tourism industry in St. Kitts is not being affected by an upsurge in shootings and murders in the country, Tourism Minister Lindsay Grant said.

A government issued statement last week said there were increases recorded in the areas of murders and shootings, but statistics also show that major crimes are down in the first quarter of 2015 when compared to the same period last year.

“The (shootings and murders) are not within the tourism plant, they are more outside so the plant is not affected. However it’s prudent to make sure that we control that so there is no spill over, but the area is, I would say, sterile,” Grant told the Caribbean News Service (CNS).

“Our government has a zero tolerance to crime and we won’t be able to root it out completely but we’re going to nip it in the bud. And I believe we have taken some initiatives as we’ve been in government for four months now, which will only redound to the benefit of our crime fighting initiatives and so you should expect over the course of the year a lessening of any potential effects from crime in St. Kitts”

Pressed further about the specific initiatives being implemented by the Dr. Timothy Harris administration to tackle the crime scourge, Grant said: “We are going to put more boots on the ground for sure. We have introduced mobile police stations within affected areas; we’ve brought on board specialists out of the UK and out of the US and so these initiatives we expect not to bear fruit tomorrow but in the foreseeable future.”

Police statistics show that there were 634 reported cases in the major crime category in 2013. The figure decreased to 401 in 2014 and was recorded at 180 reported cases from January to April in 2015.