Browne: No deals with criminals
Face crime head-on and do not negotiate with criminals.
Government backbencher Dr Sonia Browne gave that advice to the authorities recently as she called for the police “to be allowed to do their job”.
She also questioned the extent to which harsher laws against dark tint on vehicles would help to reduce serious crimes.
Browne raised her concerns in the House of Assembly when members debated and approved an amendment to the Road Traffic Act to enable a crackdown on vehicles with dark tint.
The Member of Parliament for St Philip North said: “I think we need to face crime head-on.”
She then warned against negotiating with criminals, recalling a conversation with the late former Prime Minister Owen Arthur who told her about the problems Jamaica had in this regard.
“I don’t really know the answers, but I remember way back when, maybe not so long ago, I had a pleasant conversation with the Right Honourable Owen Arthur, just after I gave my perspective on the blocks and the gangs and so on that exist in Barbados,” she said.
“And he brought up Jamaica, for instance, and said one of the issues with Jamaica is that they allowed negotiation with the gangs, they aligned with the gangs and, in effect, what happened is that you had a country where the gangs played a major part in how the country was run.”
Browne cautioned: “Deal with the criminals, not negotiate with criminals. I have a fundamental problem with that. I think the police, the law enforcement, have to be allowed to do their job.
“I don’t think it’s our purview to meet with criminals. Criminals are to be punished, not negotiated with.”
The former Minister of State in the Ministry of Health also asked for statistics “where we have proven that tint actually reduces crime”.
“Lately, crime has been in our faces, in our communities, in our districts and I can’t say that any of them were related to the absence or presence of tint on vehicles,” she argued.
“Our criminals are so brazen now that they come out in broad daylight. You just need to check social media. [They] hold up cars, beat up elderly gentlemen . . . young people [are] being stabbed. And I really cannot agree, in all good conscience, that the . . . amendments on the tint will actually prevent any of those crimes.”
She also deemed it to be “a little bit harsh” that individuals contravening the tint laws would be liable to a $500 fine with an additional $10 for every day they failed to pay the penalty.
“I think $500 with a $10 a day penalty is far too exorbitant and . . . I wish that that could be relooked to lower it, if anything.”
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