Governor Martyn Roper has registered his concern over the recent spate of gun crimes in the community saying that the National Security Council will be meeting next Tuesday to discuss plans to address the situation.
Roper, speaking on the Cayman Compass talkshow ‘The Resh Hour’ Wednesday evening, maintained the Cayman Islands remains “one of the safest places in the Caribbean” to live and work. However, gun crimes, the most recent of which reportedly happened Thursday morning, are a matter of serious concern.
Details of that latest incident are yet to be released by police.
Over the weekend, there were three gun-related incidents, one of which included a shootout on West Bay Road leaving one man nursing life-threatening injuries.
Roper said such incidents have no place in the Cayman community.
“We understand people using guns it’s a worry for the community, and it’s something that we don’t want to see in Cayman which is still one of the safest places in the Caribbean without any doubt… We are a small community and when these incidents happen, the police, I believe, do have a very good track record of quickly working out who has been responsible and they’re already following various leads in connection with those three incidents and I’m sure that there will be developments to come around those,” Roper said.
On Tuesday, he said, the NSC will receive a briefing on the recent gun crimes and what more can be done to address the problem.
Cayman’s penalties for gun crimes are “extremely strict,” he said, but it takes more effort on the part of the community to stamp out such incidents.
“If we really are going to crack down on this and deal with the individuals who are responsible, we need more cooperation between the general public and the police so that we can go after and arrest and put behind bars the people who are responsible for this,” he said.
Roper acknowledged that there may be a lack of trust in the police sometimes and “some people are wary about coming forward”. But he said more cooperation from the public, in terms of passing information to the police, is needed.
He also reminded that the police have a “good track record” of identifying the people who’ve been involved in the more serious incidents in the community in recent years and a number of those individuals responsible for such crimes are now behind bars.
Roper said he does not think that a gun amnesty will work since they have not proved effective in the past.
“You tend to get some guns handed in that are sort of old and people just want to get rid of them. There isn’t a good track record of gun amnesties actually working,” Roper added.
Pepper spray not a good idea
Roper, speaking on the calls for pepper spray to be introduced in the community to help women protect themselves, said it was not something the police is prepared to do.
“It is illegal in the UK and we are a British Overseas Territory,” he said.
Roper, in explaining the position on pepper spray, said, one of the main concerns is that if widely available it could very easily get into the wrong hands.
“You can find that the criminal groups would be using it. Imagine, if it was readily available in Cayman if schoolchildren were to were to get hold of this as well,” he added.
Roper said there are other ways open to the community to be able to protect themselves.
“There are some alarms you can get that make a very loud noise and self defence techniques that people can deploy, but I’m not personally sure pepper spray is the answer. I think when you look at the pros and cons in the round, there are a lot of very serious and significant disadvantages of pepper spray and it may not have the impact that that you think it is going to have,” he added.
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