St. Maarten Private Eye

I think the point is severely missed here. The attack itself was certainly homophobic in nature, and horrible, but there's more to it than that. It could have happened to anyone, since the attackers didn't know Mr. Jefferson was gay too, they just attacked him for trying to stop the beating. Which is an important and often overlooked fact. Again, it could have happened to any one of us, had we been there, gay, straight, black, or white. But what is even more disturbing is the non-response or pure incompetence of the police department. And the local media either chooses to overlook this gross incompetence or are just as incompetent themselves. I tend to think it's the latter.

The police, at the time of the attack, didn't know whether it was a gay-bashing or not. A physical asault was reported to them and they did little or nothing at all. That is a fact of the matter. And an important one too. That the victims were gay should not matter to a professional police force, and is completely secondary. I think the principal culprits in this unfortunate affair are the local media and police department. Both are obviously and painfully unprofessional and stocked with incompetent people who don't really understand what they are supposed to do or how to behave or how the real world works.

They don't understand that everything is connected now to the global economy, and everyone working on St. Maarten, whether in the public or private sector, owes their job and welfare to the tourism industry, from the police officer holed up in a drabby office doing paperwork to the machinists handling the printing presses in the newspaper houses. That's just a brute fact of the world. It may not be fair, but that's how it is.