NOTING?that there had been a 2.3 per cent upsurge in crime over the past year, the police will go on the beat in a more aggressive way in 2011 and with a robust approach to seizing the assets of drug barons.
At a Press conference yesterday, Commissioner Darwin Dottin said there were moves afoot to dismantle some of the drug trafficking groups here in Barbados.
And according to Dottin, the legal apparatus will be in place to facilitate the seizure of property owned by drug dealers.
“With interdiction, you take the drugs from the crime bosses, and they will regroup. What we have to do is go after their assets. We have to deal with this matter of drug trafficking.
“This has the support of the ministry and steps are being taken to ensure that the legislative framework is there to facilitate what will be a robust confiscation and forfeiture regime,” he said.
Dottin acknowledged that drugs had infiltrated some communities in a major way and affected scores of youth.
“If peace is to be restored, there is a hard-core element of criminality in some of these communities that must be broken. If you drive through some of these communities, you can see dozens of young men just wasting their lives away,”
said Dottin, who added that stiff penalties had not proven to be a deterrent to some drug bosses, who were “dispensing patronage” in some vulnerable communities.
Dottin said the time had come to enhance strategies to put a stranglehold on some of the “movers and shakers” in the drug trade.
The Commissioner said that some of the behaviour he had seen and heard had bordered on recklessness and within a matter of weeks, the police would be complementing some hard-core community policing.
Dottin said police would have a more visible presence and the force would be working more with groups and community leaders “in order to build trust and confidence”.
This country’s top cop said the police force couldn’t do it alone, stressing that there had to be a multi-agency partnership with governmental and non-governmental agencies having a role to play.
Noting that there was a nexus between drugs and guns, Dottin said the force was keen to deal with the matter of the proliferation of firearms.
