PHILIPSBURG--Justice Minister Dennis Richardson said on Wednesday that figures thus far for this year show that crime has not increased in comparison to previous years.

 

However, he said criminals were becoming more and more violent and now had a “new phenomenon” of shooting at officers responding to crimes.

 

Richardson told reporters that Government would be requesting assistance from the Ministers of Justice of Curaçao and Aruba for officers from those islands to help St. Maarten with “high impact” crimes. He had planned to sign the letters to this effect on Wednesday.

 

He also has appealed for help from the “joint detective team” in the area of tackling high impact crime and “they have agreed to make officers available to increase activities and investigate these issues in the coming months.” He said he was waiting for the Royal Marechaussees to participate and had high hopes that this would happen.

 

While crime is one of the biggest concerns on the island, Richardson said the Ministry could not act based on perception, only on facts. He said there had been 10 murders in 2014 compared to seven thus far for this year, excluding the two robbers who were shot in the recent PanAmerican Protective Services attack. He does not consider the two PanAmerican deaths murder because he said the men had been shot in self-defence.

In terms of robberies with weapons, Richardson said there had been 150-155 incidents last year and it appeared the number would remain the same for this year.

 

He said a number of shocking and violent criminal activities had occurred in a short period of time.

 

“The figures do not demonstrate an increase compared to 2014. The figures demonstrate that the use of violence is constantly increasing. This can’t be blamed on the police, this has to do with problems in our society that have to be dealt with in a preventative fashion and this concerns taking measures to save our young people from a criminal path, because the mentality has hardened terribly. We have to jointly do something about this,” he said.

 

Richardson “fully supports” his colleague Minister who has to deal with this issue, as prevention “is more valuable to save lives and keeping Government from spending gigantic amounts of money prosecuting, investigating and incarcerating citizens of St. Maarten.”

 

He said he had met on Monday with the police, who believe that the recent spate of murders has to do with “eliminations” in the “criminal organisation,” which he said could increase by the end of the year.

The measures taken after the murder of Police Bike Patrol leader Officer Gamali “Benji” Benjamin have led to a “decrease in activities of criminal persons and organisations in Philipsburg.”

 

“There are increased patrols of officers in different areas and they are not predictable. We are not making a lot of noise about it, but the work continues and the officers put their lives on the line on a daily basis.

“The new phenomenon is attacking the officers with weapons. We did not know this before, but ... numerous criminals were shooting at police when the police approach them and this is an indication of the tendency of violence of a new group of criminals on-island.”

 

He said a small group of officers were doing “tremendous work” with limited resources. Most of the crimes have led to arrests and in the cases that have not led to arrests, police were aware of “where to look” and they would lead to arrests.

 

He said criminals would not easily escape prosecution in the country. Authorities are doing all they can to keep crime under control so that it does not “explode and overwhelm society.”