On Monday, the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) partnered with the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force to destroy over 300 decommissioned, unusable, and unserviceable firearms in the possession of local law enforcement.
The destruction of the weapons occurred at the SSU Headquarters at La Toc, Castries.
Callixtus Joseph, Acting Assistant Director, Policy, Strategy and Innovation at IMPACS, explains that this routine exercise limits criminals’ access to a supply of weapons. According to him, the guns may be stolen by criminal elements, refurbished, and used if left unchecked.
“The police also usually change their stock of weapons, which is for instance what they may have been using 20 years ago they may not be using now. However, they still have what they were using 20 years ago. So those weapons would just be stored somewhere. Now if something is just stored somewhere, there perhaps could be theft of it,” Joseph said.
Firearms confiscated by police are typically retained by law enforcement until the conclusion of the legal proceedings.
Furthermore, additional testing and forensic analysis are conducted to determine whether the firearm was involved in other crimes. Once these investigations are complete, the weapons are scheduled for destruction.
Joseph adds that this exercise will result in saving hundreds of lives as stolen firearms can wreak additional havoc on Saint Lucia.
” 333 weapons we are destroying today and if you think of 333 weapons, each weapon could be a loss of life – but guess what? Each weapon could be used more than once. So how many lives are you saving?”
Joseph says IMPACS is training RSLPF officers in weapons record-keeping and management to limit the possibility of stolen arms.
He explained that the training will ensure officers are sufficiently equipped to account for the weapons in police storage.
“Another activity we are doing also is that we are training the persons, officials from the Royal St. Lucia Police Force in terms of weapons ammunition management, how to manage their stockpile, how to record properly, how to ensure what you have is what you’re supposed to have in there,” he said.
The weapons destroyed on Monday were collected over a period of two decades.
