 Hello and welcome to another NTN update for today, the 23rd of March, 2021. In this program, we will be briefed by the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, speaking to us about recent COVID-19 breaches, COVID-19 protocol breaches, as well as overall updates on crime and security in Saint Lucia. I would like to welcome from the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, Dr. Mashama Sealy, Superintendent of Police and a top cop, Milton Daisy, Commissioner of Police. Good afternoon to you both. Good afternoon. I want to start with you, Dr. Mashama, to just give us Mashama Sealy to speak to us on the COVID-19 breaches for the last few weeks. Thank you. COVID breaches from the 27th of December, 2020 to 20th of March, 2021. Business operation breaches total 136. Total arrested 18. Convictions 1. Warnings 118. Home quarantine breaches total 17. 15 individuals were escorted to various quarantine sites and two were cleared by the medical team prior to being escorted to a quarantine site. State quarantine breaches 1. The individual was warned and returned to his room. Home party breaches 12. Total arrested 5. Complaints lodged 3. Warnings 4. Many bus travel breaches 162. Warnings 162. Individual protocol breaches that is persons not wearing a mask. Total 709. Total arrested 97. Complaints were launched against six individuals. Convictions 30. Fines were between $200 and $800. One person was given 40 hours community service and another one year probation. Warnings 606. Mass crowd breaches total 17. Total arrested 1. Warnings 16. Hotel breaches total 11. Number of persons arrested 1. Convictions 1. Warnings 10. Curfew breaches 118. Total arrested 81. Complaints were lodged against eight persons. Nine were convicted and fined $1,000. Warnings 29. Total number of persons arrested so far 201. Number of complaints lodged in total 17. Total number of convictions 40. The following are prohibited or rather should not be practiced. Mass crowd events or rather people gathering in large numbers. River and beach limes. And bar owners are reminded to comply with the grab and go protocol. Friday, the 2nd of April to Monday, the 5th of April, kindly be reminded that curfew will be from 7pm to 4am and businesses are to close by 6pm. We are still experiencing individuals remaining at the bars, congregating with friends and drinking, or persons congregating on the beaches and drinking and not maintaining the protocols. This is unprecedented times. This disease does not respect anyone. It is not confined to one person. We are not where we need to be with regards to ourselves being safe and so we need to ensure that we minimize the spread of COVID by thinking of our friends, our loved ones, our children, our grandchildren because we do not want to increase or enhance any risk to their safety. And so we encourage persons to continue to follow the protocol and those who do so, we thank you and appreciate you and encourage you to continue to do so always. And we ask that everyone in an effort to mitigate against COVID-19, that we wear our mask properly when leaving our homes, we maintain social distancing and we sanitize. In that way, you are safe, your family is safe and we as a community remain safe. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Sealy for that update and of course the plea to the general public to continue complying to the COVID-19 protocols. I now want to engage you, Mr. Daisy, Commissioner of Police on the recent trends in the degree in compliance to the COVID-19 protocols. Can you speak to us? I mean, it is at least a travesty that after a year of admonitions to the public that we still need to contend with these sorts of non-adherence in the public domain but can you speak to the trends that we've so far seen at least from December coming into March? We had the third wave at the beginning of the year. Tell us what the trends are so far from that time. Yes, actually what we are seeing is an increase in the number of breaches committed by individuals and we believe after a year persons would have understood and take note of the various protocols and as I have said before, the protocols are simple. It is something that every child remembers. It is wearing of your mask, sanitizing, keeping the distance, washing your hands, et cetera. I don't think this is too much of asking persons to do and what we realize also is that persons in as much as social gatherings are not permitted except through the churches and so on or places of worship, you find that persons go on the beach in as much as being on the beach is not an offense but they are being there after they have probably consumed some alcohol, they behave in manners that like there's no COVID and urgent persons to be aware of that and once this is done, if you are behaving the way you ought to, if you are observing the protocols, I'll say again, there would be no need for any police officer to come to you to ask you to behave or so wear your mask. So I believe that this is one of the things that we see at all times, yes. Breaches in the social sector are arguably one of the most critical, a crippling sorry to the COVID-19 effort overall response effort. Speak to us about the upcoming Easter weekend. We know that some of the measures will be tightened including the curfew being reduced. Speak to us about the plan of the Royal Sanctuary Police Force for that time period. Yes, actually I need to remind persons that the curfew time would be reduced. So from nine to seven p.m. And by this, at six p.m. all businesses, all whatever parties that you are having that is approved parties because we know that persons are permitted to have 10 family members and have a session probably could be a birthday or just a get together but 10 members of the family could have a party. So but it must be over by six because curfew starts at seven. So any person who has to get to their place would get sufficient time between six and seven to get out of wherever they are. Let's speak a little bit about cooperation with law enforcement and also including the wardens. We've seen so far that there have been instances where members of the public have not been cooperating with members of the force, the wardens in terms of adhering to the COVID-19 protocols. Speak to us about the feeling and the concern coming from your office with respect to the potential danger that your men would be exposed to and not just coming into violent encounters but also the risk of COVID-19 exposure. Yes, because when persons do not comply, say especially for the mask, not wearing the mask and a warden or police officer approaches this individual, this police officer also puts his life at danger because if you are not wearing a mask and you are not complying after having asked to wear one, there have been instances where the officers are offering masks to those individuals and they will tell you they do not want it but they will leave that individual alone and it is an offense not to wear the mask so the officer would walk up and try to effect an arrest so putting the officer's life at risk also. Thanks for that. I want to broaden our scope at this point in time to crime and security overall on Ireland. We have so far seen successive homicides in the past week or so. Can you speak to that, the investigation that is ongoing by the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force? Yes, actually over the past week and we saw four shootings which amounted to three homicides. Actually in one of the shootings where it was reported that it was a homicide, the person is still alive at OKU hospital so it was three shootings. Now at this stage I must sympathize with the families of those persons lost, especially the woman on Darling Road. We all saw the videos going flashing by. The she was shot at point blank and a defenseless person, a male coming to a woman. And this I think is something that we need to look at and actually we are pursuing a suspect in that matter and we are hoping that justice would be served when this person is arrested. For the other ones, we are gathering evidence, the Major Crime Unit officers, they are working round the clock trying to investigate these accidents, these incidents sorry. And from office of commissioner and the executive, we are there to give, to render any support that is needed in order that we could bring these investigations to an end. Now when that is done, if one is arrested, we are hoping that the process would go on smoothly, especially from the officers, the work of the officer do not end when we are arrested. We are, there's the court process and persons going to court, persons being convicted or whatever, but we would like to see the processes go on smoothly. Okay, we have so far along with the incidents, the shootings that have occurred in the last weekend, there have been quite a few rumors circulating. Can you bring clarification to at least one? There was an incident, well, a case where they were saying that the woman who lost her life, Hermia Lord, may have been cooperating with police. We do not have any information to support that, actually when that was being circulated, when we got that info, we investigated and we checked the various stations, we checked our units, various units involved in arresting persons for drugs, the drug unit, yes, our intel unit, and there was no way that she had given or even attempted to give police, police any information. However, whatever information that we get, we will work on it. There are orders circulating, so we are working on whatever information that is relayed to the public because that is what investigation is about. We do not dispel at first hand that information we would investigate and to find out because what we are looking for is the motive and to find an individual responsible for the various crimes. So we are working along those lines and as soon as I said, I know for one of them, the lady has probably as soon as possible, we would have someone arrested for that. And in the same vein, we are asking members of the public, in fact, instead of circulating voice notes or messages that you could get to someone, the office of the commissioner, the close friend as it has been communicated, the police that you trust, somebody, give them that information which would be relayed to the investigator so that we would be able to see light through our investigation. So I'm appealing to members of the public and also thanking those who have come forward to give information. I know it's still early, but have you been able to determine any connection between those shootings? We have tried to, through our mappings, but from now we have not seen any connections between the shootings. I am not saying there's none, but we have not seen it through the investigations. It's not pointing us to any connection. Okay, and these incidents came on the heels of word from the Royal St. Lucia Police Force that we had enjoyed a reduction in the past year in criminal activity overall. Can you speak to the plan of the Royal St. Lucia Police Force going forward in terms of trying to get a hold back on this crime situation? Of course, it has certainly raised the alarm of the general public. What are your concerns, sentiments? Yes, actually our aim is to work towards reducing crime. Now, before giving the plans that we have, I need to indicate that crime fighting is not the police alone. We know that is a big responsibility that we have to fight crime where we could prevent and investigate when it happens, but crime fighting in general, to see a reduction in the crime situation, it has to, everybody has to be involved. The various agencies, the schools that these persons attend because before they reach that age, they would have passed a school. They have the family where they live, the area where they live. So it is something that we need to work on holistically and so that we could see a total reduction in crime. However, the police, we will do our part. We are hoping and we are continuing to have our patrols. That's one of the things that we would be doing. We also doing intelligence driven patrols. So we would be doing our general patrol and our patrol base on Intel gathered. We would also do our hotspot, what we call a hotspot policing. That is where based on the statistics having analyzed it, you would find areas where crimes are more prevalent. So you would have your resources directed in those areas. Also, we would be doing the hotspot individuals, right? So we know the persons based on intelligence gathered again or past history of individuals. We would keep a tab on those individuals, being at them, doing our stop and searches and so on. Our traffic checks, all these things, we will be getting into to ensure that we bring some form of normalcy into St. Lucia. Okay, I now invite you both for closing words as we wrap up this briefing. Dr. Seely. I'd just like to encourage the public to maintain their social distancing, to wear a mask properly and to sanitize and encourage other persons to do so as well. In so doing, it's not only we maintaining our personal responsibility, but we're ensuring the safety of not just ourselves, but our families and members of our community as well. Thank you. Mr. Daisy. Yes, just to reassure our members of the public that the police will continue on his journey in the crime fighting efforts. We will do all we can to ensure that justice is done, especially to persons who have lost their loved ones. Sometimes we believe that some cases take long, yes, but we would rather it take some time. We ask in persons to be patient, to let us gather the evidence that is needed to bring these cases to court. Bringing a case to court without the evidence to show that somebody is responsible, it makes no sense. So we are gathering evidence. There are things that need to be done, cannot be done in St. Lucia. Like getting certain tests done, we have to rely on overseas technicians to do it. So sometimes it takes a long process. There are many cases I would have loved to see completed, but we are still in the process of gathering information within reports from overseas and so on. So just to ask persons, victims to bury first and we would see light through the tunnels someday. Thank you very much, Mr. Daisy. This has been another NTN update, of course, a special featuring the Royal St. Lucia Police Force and the persons of Superintendent of Police, Dr. Mashama Sealy and Commissioner of Police, Milton Daisy, providing an update there on the recent COVID-19 breaches, as well as the actions taken with respect to each of them and matters overall, safety and security and crime in recent times. Of course, on behalf of everyone here at the GIS, our sympathies go out to the individuals who, the families and loved ones of individuals who lost their lives in the recent criminal activity. And of course, as the Commissioner of Police indicated, a call to the general public to come forward if you have any information with respect to these various incidents to assist with the investigation. My name is Jessie Leon, signing off for now. Do stay tuned to NTN for more programming. Goodbye.