As Barbados’ police detectives search for the killers responsible for the deadly firebombing of a Bridgetown store, New York’s top cop is offering to help with the investigation.
Raymond Kelly, Police Commissioner for almost a decade, told the Daily Nation that his experts would be prepared to meet with Bajan investigators.
“We certainly would be willing to meet with [Barbados law enforcement personnel], and talk about some of the tactics and strategies that have proved helpful to us here,” Kelly said in Brooklyn.
With serious crimes, including homicides, now at a 20-year low across the city, the Police Commissioner said that the crime wave now sweeping Caribbean islands and coastal states was a source of worry for the city because of its impact on the five boroughs.
“We do see violence in certain Caribbean countries and sometimes it spreads here in New York City,” he said. “I don’t think we necessarily have the answers to the Caribbean (problem). We are always struggling with crime here. Crime is down here to record lows, but one crime is one crime too many, particularly when it comes to the victims.”
As for assistance to the wider Caribbean, Barbados included, Kelly said that senior officials of the NYPD often met with representatives of Caribbean police departments to discuss what “we are doing . . . .”
Kelly cautioned authorities and others against declaring victory when crime statistics fall because “crime is a constant issue, not something you can take your eye off.”
Meanwhile New York City Police detective Leroy Hutchinson, a former president of the Barbados Ex-Police Association, said that the killing of women in the Tudor Street incident was a clear indication of the shifting nature of crime in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean and urged a frontal and systematic assault on it before it got worse.
“The killings in Bridgetown were shocking, unheard of in a country like Barbados,” said the Bajan. “We were horrified when we first heard about it because we would never have believed that something as horrible as that could have occurred in Barbados.”
