Attorney General reports on performance
The Supreme Court is back in operation at its Whitepark Road home, there is an increase in the number of functioning courtrooms and there are efforts on to increase the number of High Court judges as Government seeks to address the issue of crime and violence.
That’s according to Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Dale Marshall. He was speaking at a public rally in The City to mark the Barbados Labour Party’s one year anniversary of winning the general election, as he offered a report of the performance of his ministry over the past year.
“When we came to government, we came to a court that was non-functioning; we came to a backlog of cases in the civil jurisdiction of many, many, many thousands; we came to find the backlog of over a thousand cases waiting for trial in the High Court in the criminal division – those are the things we came and found. For years we had been preaching to the Government of the day that they needed to take the issue of gun violence seriously,” he said.
He added, “We came to find a level of don’t-carishness that had beset our country, but we came to put things right”.
With that in mind, he said while the former Government failed to ease the pressure off the existing judges, the Mottley Administration is working assiduously to increase the number of judges, so as to share the burden of cases more evenly.
“We have put a new system in place for the appointment of judges, we are recruiting because we are not satisfied that the people of Barbados should have a case pending for 10 years and five years and four years without getting justice. How can we claim to be a just society, if people cannot get justice from our courts? And on the criminal side of things, do you know that we have had 26 murders for the year? I count them every day, 26 murders and of those 26, 15 were by firearms. Last year there had [been] a total of 27 murders for the entire year, but up to the end of May, this little beautiful Barbados is struggling under the weight of 26 murders, some of which you know were callous [and] in public places,” he said.
But Marshall is adamant that this situation did not evolve overnight, contending that the BLP’s offer to help the former government was ignored and he lamented that “the chickens have now come home to roost”. He said as a result, the current government has been left to deal with a problem that should been dealt with five to 10 years ago.
“In order to make sure that is done, we have provided the Port with the necessary finances to be able to bring in new scanners to stop the guns from coming in. It will be the job of the police to deal with the ones that are here now,” he stated.
He made the point while speaking about the limited success of the recently held gun amnesty, which netted 38 guns and 843 bullets, noting that gun violence has continued. Noting that some young men and women have gone astray, he said Government is determined to rescue them. To help the police in doing its duty to maintain law and order, he indicated they have appointed two deputy commissioners of police and additional assistant commissioners of police, which will help to strengthen the leadership of the Force.
“The Prime Minister understood the importance of many hands making light work, well if it is important for Barbados and our Cabinet, why would it not be important for the Royal Barbados Police Force? And we have come to government and given the police additional funding, additional resources, additional equipment so as to be able to help them do the job and we’ve added the BDF [Barbados Defence Force] to that profile as well, so as to help them do even more,” AG Marshall declared.
The Attorney General spoke to this as he noted that it will take some time to eradicate gun violence from our shores, explaining that it is not an issue that can be overturned in one year. But, he gave the assurance that Government will do all it can to rid Barbados of gun violence. (JRT)