St. Maarten Private Eye

I read your post and I agree with you when you say, we must prevent crime more on this Island. For years the police on the streets are asking for more personnel and equipment to do the work on the streets and no one listen. What our leaders do they send personnel for the detective department to investigate crime after the act. Nothing wrong with wanting to solve the crimes that are being committed, but we should be preventing them from happening first. What does it serve us to hear at year end that the police solve 50, 60 % of the crime committed, while crime has grown by 150% this same year, because we are focusing on solving and not preventing. We need police on the streets to prevent these crimes from happening. These Crimes happens because the criminals know that there are no police on the streets or very little that the chance of getting caught in the act is null. Do we really think that putting extra personnel in the detective department, will stop arm robberies or break-inn etc, think again. All it will do is make the chance of catching the criminal after the fact greater, but it will not stop it from happening. There is talk about camera's etc, this is very good, but nothing can take the place of old fashion police on the beat to prevent crime. It is a while now that the police got marechaussee, my question is did the crime stop, no it did not and will not. Crime will be there always, but we can minimize it with more police on the street. Prevention is the answer and this will be complimented with the solving of the act that can still be committed. At the end of the year we can say we solve 50,60% of the crime committed and because of prevention plan crime has gone down by 50,60 %. that is what the public wants. A feeling of safety, that the police are out there on the streets that the criminal would think twice before trying something..