told The Consortium<\/a><\/span> that crime in the territory would get worse before results of his administration\u2019s initiatives could start manifesting.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve got a bit of bad news that, as governor, being honest with the community, I must share. The violence is going to be brought under control, but there is going to be more violence and there\u2019s going to be more homicides and more shootings before we arrest this problem because we have to catch up,” Mr. Mapp said. “The government has to catch up with a lack of officers on the streets, the lack of law enforcement personnel. We have to catch up because we\u2019ve done little in the past modernizing our department and resources. [We have to give] equipment and tools to our law enforcement personnel, we are behind in what we\u2019ve done to train them. We are behind because our partnerships with our federal law enforcement partners prior to this administration was practically nonexistent. The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) was not even in the Virgin Islands.\u00a0And none of what I\u2019m saying is ascribing any blame to anyone; I\u2019m just saying as governor, this is the raw reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
The governor said his administration\u2019s efforts have caused change, \u201cand as we bring these resources to the table, as we bring additional boots on the ground, as we infuse more equipment and resources to our police department, as we train and upgrade all levels of policing in the territory, that is when policing in the community will begin to see a different change in this outward violence that we see,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mapp went on to list the new abilities that he said would eventually come online once these initiatives take hold.\u00a0\u201cWe will have the capacity to target, we will have the intelligence-gathering capability to take people down before they\u2019re able to commit many of these violent acts that we are seeing. We\u2019re going to have to ask the Senate to make some minor adjustments on the statute having to do with the possession of firearms so people that we know that are bringing in firearms legally [through] their luggage into the Virgin Islands, to deal with that issue just by a simple change to our local statutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil all of these realities are aligned, there\u2019s going to be outbursts of violence and there\u2019s going to be outbursts of shootings, and that\u2019s an unfortunate reality, but to be very candid, that is the reality,\u201d Mr. Mapp said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be clear, I\u2019m not saying to the Virgin Islands community that the government is doing nothing until all of these things have occurred, because the police commissioner, myself and the U.S. Attorney \u2014 we have been coming before the Virgin Islands community and updating you on the changes, infusions, partnerships and on the training.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in fifteen months we\u2019re not going to go from outward massive violent shootings in the community to none. And so we hope to see less of it, but I\u2019m going to tell you we\u2019re going to see more as we go into the future, until we get ourselves completely retrofitted, positioned and resourced that we can really bring this problem to a screeching halt and only have exceptions rather than the normal course of action.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Feature Image: VIPD Officers collecting evidence following a shooting homicide in Frederiksted, in October 2015. (Credit: VIC)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. CROIX — The Virgin Islands Police Department has updated the 2016 homicide count to forty-seven, 40 of which were shooting\/stabbing-related, while 7 were vehicular. The information was provided upon request by the force’s public information officer, Glen Dratte. Of the 47 homicides, St. Croix has seen 22 so far, six of which were vehicular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[228,4400,11,191,2474,147],"tags":[5672,121],"yoast_head":"\n
VIPD Updates 2016 Homicide Count To 47; On Current Track, It Could Be 60 By Year's End - V.I. 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