Commissioner of Police Vows To Remove High-Powered Firearm from Streets Amid Rising Crime Wave

A powerful, deadly, firearm is in circulation and Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce has vowed the Police Service will do all in its power to get it off the streets.

The gun, said to be a fully automatic AR style rifle or AK-47, was said to have been used to gun down a young man at Silver Sands, Christ Church, last month.

Speaking to a Nation team Thursday on the crime situation which has gripped the country for the past several weeks and resulted in a number of young men being gunned down in quick succession, the Commissioner stated: “Unfortunately, one of the weapons is a high-powered weapon, and that is of grave concern to us. It is a weapon which is not easily available. When we see it being put into operation, we know we have a battle on our hands and we would take every step and make every effort to retrieve that weapon.”

He added: “The persons who are tasked to look into the situation, they are working around the clock and no doubt we will succeed going forward. Before, they were mostly light weapons, that is, small, ordinary weapons. But when we see it step up, it tells us that it will be a battle for the long haul.

“I’m saying we will not stop and we will not leave any stones unturned until we get everything under control, where firearm offences and activities are concerned,” he assured.

The Commissioner also reported that the police was successful so far in recovering a number of the illegal firearms and bullets being used while confirming that ballistic tests showed a number of these guns were used in more than one murder.

“It tells you that persons, at least persons who have these weapons, they are moving around and it’s not at least a large number of persons. For us, it is a small group of persons who are just moving from district to district and creating this type of havoc,” he noted.

While many have been calling the shootings gang-related, the top cop stated this current spike in crime was not mostly gang-related but what he called a “a mix”.

“It is a mix, a mix in terms of persons who were once affiliated with close gangs. Those are persons now who operate on their own and taking their own action against their enemies or rivals or whoever. So it’s not mostly gang-related.”

He assured the public that the police have been mobilised to deal with this uptick in violent crime.

“What I would say upfront to you is that the situation as it relates to the recent spike in criminal activities in the country, especially during the month of June this year when we saw the spike, it has been a major concern to the Barbados Police Service.