Police aren’t protecting the “big boys”. They just don’t have any evidence to arrest them.
That simple explanation was given by Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite as the reason why lawmen had been having difficulty apprehending the kingpins overseeing the criminal activity in Barbados.
He contended that while police was able to nab the smaller criminals who were more conspicuous, authorities simply did not have enough evidence to do the same to their “bosses”.
“The problem that we are faced with is evidence. You can’t just charge someone because we hear in his community that he is the [gang] leader. These names are not the ones that the police see beside the streets smoking weed, or the ones with the haversacks when the police stop them which are filled with contraband. You can hold the ones in front of you.
“So if you give us the evidence and information all of this talk about us protecting the leaders will disappear,” Brathwaite said as he delivered closing remarks at yesterday’s National Consultation on Violence.
However, the Minister of Home Affairs promised that legislation would soon be passed which would allow law enforcement to seize any properties belonging to these leaders once they were found to have committed a crime.
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