BANG THEM: PM Browne Calls for Tougher Police Response to Young Thieves Amid Rise in Petty Crime
Prime Minister Gaston Browne says police should take a tougher approach to young people involved in petty crime, suggesting officers use physical force against suspected chain snatchers despite anticipated criticism from human rights advocates.
Browne made the remarks during his weekly Pointe FM programme on Saturday while discussing the government’s efforts to prevent criminals from being transferred to Antigua and Barbuda under a proposed third-country deportee agreement with the United States.
Arguing that Antigua and Barbuda has worked hard to maintain public safety, the prime minister said he was concerned by a recent increase in opportunistic crimes, including robberies in which gold chains have been snatched from victims.
“We have some little petty crimes of people pulling people’s chains off their necks and so on,” Browne said. “I don’t know why the police don’t set up some sting operation and put some licks in their skin. It’s high time we start. Put some blows on them. Tell me about the human rights and some of them young thieves—they bang them, put some blows on them.”
Browne’s comments came as he defended the government’s insistence that any third-country nationals accepted from the United States should not have criminal records.
He said Antigua and Barbuda’s relatively low crime rate should not be jeopardized by accepting deportees with serious criminal backgrounds.
“The point I’m making here is that we are not in a position, obviously, to say that we can’t take any. But I think that we can take the moral high ground on the issue of criminality,” Browne said before reiterating that the government has asked U.S. authorities to certify that anyone transferred to Antigua and Barbuda has no criminal history and does not suffer from serious illnesses.
The prime minister said the government has made it clear that the only criminal offence it would be prepared to overlook is a violation of U.S. immigration laws.
“The only crime that we will accept… is if they had some immigration violation,” Browne said, noting that Antigua and Barbuda has traditionally regularized undocumented migrants through periodic amnesty programmes rather than treating them as criminals.
Browne also argued that Antigua and Barbuda does not have the capacity to deal with sophisticated criminals who may have acquired criminal expertise abroad.
“I also said to them that we don’t have the sophistication to deal with very sophisticated criminals, many of whom exist in your society,” he said. “They learn the skills right in those countries, including the United States, and you’re going to send them back here? What do you think of that? You’re going to destroy our country.”
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