Former National Security Minister, Dr. Keith Mondesir, believes people are making an issue out of nothing over the so-called IMPACS affair.
IMPACS is the acronym for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security.
In 2014, then Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony invited the agency to probe allegations of extra-judicial killings by police here.
The killings occurred from 2010 to 2011 during an anti-crime offensive dubbed – Operation Restore Confidence (ORC).
And in 2015, Anthony read excerpts of a report by the IMPACS investigators on national television.
Among other things, the public heard that the police staged encounters and had a ‘hit list’.
As a result, in 2013 the United States suspended assistance to the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force.
And in doing so, Washington cited allegations of serious human rights violations.
But former National Security Minister, Dr. Keith Mondesir has raised questions about the issue.
“Which country that the policemen, for them to curb crime, sometimes have to go out of the way?” He stated.
“In America, every day they’re killing blacks and they’re getting away with it in the courts,” the former minister noted.
“That IMPACS thing – that should be buried,” Mondesir declared.
He explained that a small country like Saint Lucia has neither the resources nor the finances to ‘nurse criminals.’
Mondesir advocated a ‘tough hand’ and a ‘heavy whip’ for criminals to respect law and order.
He explained that criminals cannot be treated in the same way as law abiding citizens.
But he indicated that it was not a case where Saint Lucia police went out of their way and started killing people.
“These guys were dangerous – they were not virgins you know,” he declared.
“You have to ask the criminals, ‘Why are you causing the police to go to that extent to shoot?'”
Mondesir also spoke of a need to address the crime problem in Saint Lucia in a holistic way.
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