With the escalation of gun violence on our streets and the gun touting criminal elements here showing little respect for our police, do we want to be compared with Kingston, Jamaica?

One of our stories published today has the headline – “This Caribbean city is the 16th most violent in the world”. We have pre-fixed it with “Kingston, Jamaica”.

Yes, right next door to us is the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice’s #16 ranked most violent cities in the world.

The article states Jamaica has seen over 210 murders already for 2018 and last year, Kingston alone had 705 murders. It makes the shocking statistic this is a rate of 59.7 per every 100 thousand inhabitants!

Can it happen here? Yes it could if our community doesn’t come together and work with our police.

I have voiced my dismay in a number of editorials at the statements of zero tolerance regarding the smallest of traffic offences that immediately alienates the large majority of our country’s lawabiding citizens. It is time, however, to disregard this as an irritant. Do we want a continuation of criminals shooting at police on our roads?

The police have appealed to the public for information on these criminals and Acting Governor, Mr. Franz Manderson has issued a statement encouraging “everyone to work with us because confronting crime can only be addressed effectively together. “

Please see our story published today “Statement from the Acting Cayman Islands Governor re increase in gun crime”.

I urge everyone to heed the Acting Governor’s Statement.

Do we want a situation where all our police will be armed and I don’t mean just with tasers?

The most innocent of circumstances where a man in the USA recently was putting a number plate on a SUV he had just purchased resulted in him being held at gunpoint by an over zealous and suspicious police officer. If the man had over-reacted, like I probably would have, he would have been shot, especially if he had reached into his pocket for his purchase documents.

And the law is on the side of the police officer not yours. You see, when investigating complaints, it is essential to understand an officer’s mindset to determine the facts. Even though mindset is not a fact.

That was the determination in the above case.

I was having lunch with a police officer here and he told me that when he was on the UK police force he was taught to view everybody as a potential criminal. I don’t know if that is also the mindset here.

These barriers between us and the police have to be removed. The police have started a community patrol with officers assigned to every district. That is their start to open the barriers. Now it is time for us to do the same.

With Kingston near our doorstep we had better.