The Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment says it will not al­low any com­mu­ni­ty on the is­land to be held un­der siege un­der any cir­cum­stances.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Dale Mar­shall, said that 2025 has be­gun “with gun­men wreak­ing hav­oc” in the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty of the Pine in the south­west por­tion of the is­land.

He said for­tu­nate­ly, while the in­juries sus­tained have not been life-threat­en­ing, “what has ob­vi­ous­ly been threat­ened is the abil­i­ty of the res­i­dents to live peace­ful­ly in their homes and to be out­doors in the night, as is their right.

“We will not al­low any com­mu­ni­ty in Bar­ba­dos to be held un­der siege, not un­der any cir­cum­stances. The Po­lice Ser­vice is there­fore de­ter­mined that as an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, the Pine ar­eas will see sat­u­rat­ed polic­ing.”

Mar­shall said this re­sponse will cer­tain­ly place in­creased pres­sure on the man­pow­er re­sources, “but this is a nec­es­sary step at this stage”  and that there are, of course, oth­er mat­ters that are be­ing pur­sued, but those are op­er­a­tional mat­ters that are left to the po­lice lead­er­ship.

Mar­shall said he was ask­ing the res­i­dents of the Pine to match the po­lice ef­forts at mak­ing them safe by com­ing for­ward with what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion they may have, no mat­ter how in­signif­i­cant they may feel it to be.

“Ear­ly in­for­ma­tion al­lows the Po­lice Ser­vice to be more ef­fec­tive in their ef­forts and can even help them to pre­vent these kinds of oc­cur­rences. This is not an idle state­ment. On nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, the Po­lice Ser­vice has been able to take steps to neu­tralise threats to our com­mu­ni­ties com­plete­ly un­known to res­i­dents. Help them to help you.

“From the gov­ern­ment side, we are con­tin­u­ing to strength­en the hand of law en­force­ment in a va­ri­ety of ways, tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial and leg­isla­tive. We’re al­so work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with our CARI­COM sis­ter gov­ern­ments to ad­dress the crime is­sues that we are all see­ing on the rise across the re­gion.”

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said the work con­tin­ues every day at keep­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in check, prais­ing the mem­bers of the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Ser­vice “who put their lives and well-be­ing at risk con­stant­ly to keep us all safe”.

Last week, po­lice warned crim­i­nals of a crack­down on their ac­tiv­i­ties af­ter the is­land record­ed three mur­ders.

“It has not been com­fort­ing from the per­spec­tive that 13 days in­to the year, we have three homi­cides, we have in­stances of rob­beries, we have had youth crime, and we have had some con­cern about the whole area of roads polic­ing. I say roads polic­ing be­cause it is per­haps one of the ar­eas we have to em­pha­sise at this meet­ing,”  Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Er­win Boyce, told a news con­fer­ence then.

“What I am say­ing to those per­sons who think they are strong enough and bold enough and brazen enough and brash enough to do these things, we are go­ing to get you. We are go­ing to get you; The Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Ser­vice is go­ing to get you; and we are go­ing to get you soon­er [rather] than lat­er.”

Bar­ba­dos record­ed 50 killings last year.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Jan 21, CMC

CMC/af/ir/2025