Perhaps the greatest challenge that we face – and the greatest threat to our quality of life and to our future – is the challenge of crime. There is no way to, nor is there any reason to, gloss over crime and the criminal activity of this past year. The behaviors we have witnessed are not just unacceptable, they are uncivilized and they are destructive to our way of life.

The Police Department has kept reasonably close count of who has been victimized – and why. They have found that acts of reprisal and revenge, and drug involvement, account for most of the violence that we have experienced. But this certainly does not excuse what has been going on. 

During the twelve months of 2009, we saw 54 homicides, with 51 involving guns. Most of these cases involved individuals who had previously been arrested, or a person of interest to the police, or a person who had already been involved in some manner with our justice system during their often brief lives. 

Many of these eighteen, nineteen, twenty-something year olds who are so quick to pull a gun and open fire did not just become criminals overnight, they did not just become individuals with little sense of the worth of a human life, even their own. 

Many of the young people who we find in the revolving door of our criminal justice system dropped out of our social service and educational systems when they were in the 7th and 8th grades. 

• They did not have the support or the foundation that would allow them to imagine the possibilities of a constructive life. 
• They never had the benefit of or the experience of steady, consistent and positive adult supervision. 
• They lacked the benefit of a meaningful connection between home and school. 

And without the benefit of continuing adult supervision and instruction, they found themselves in a downward spiral, with no job, with no future. 

What they do have is a taste for immediate gratification that all too often they satisfy by taking from others without regard to the cost, whether financial or emotional. This is a sad and harsh reality. But it is both their present reality and ours. And, for their benefit, and for the security of the rest of us, it is a reality that I am committed to changing. 

The list of factors that got us here is hardly unknown to us. This list is very much the same list it was three years ago and ten years ago and twenty years ago. And there is no single social policy, nor any single police action, that will fix this problem. It is a problem that needs to be attacked from many different directions:

Yes we need more police – and we have not stopped recruiting and we are implementing more focused community policing.

Yes we need to focus our prosecution efforts – and we are creating the environment to ensure fewer plea bargains thus getting us more convictions for significant violations.

And yes the judges in our courts must do more and do better to assure that justice is swift and fair – and they must do so with the balance that sends the message that you will pay for your crime and not be able to take advantage of the system. 

But all the police in the world – better trained and better equipped– cannot be on every street corner intervening in every dispute that insanely degenerates from slight or insult to stab wounds and gunfire. All the prosecutors in the world will not be able to convict those who were not raised to understand that words not beatings are how to raise a child and how children must learn to settle their differences. Schools and churches, teachers, pastors and coaches can only support parents, they cannot supplant them. 

A Commitment to Public Safety

Over the last four years, the de Jongh-Francis Administration has stayed focused on the task of strengthening the capability and responsiveness of our enforcement system. We are moving forward with police substations in neighborhoods. We have expanded the cadet corps and continued to recruit new police officers. We have also tapped into the experience and knowledge of many of our retired officers and brought them back to lend their expertise. And we have taken hundreds of guns off the street.

We have solved more crimes and made more arrests for these crimes, but we remain committed to gathering and using ever-better information and intelligence from every source to preempt illegal acts. Over the past few years we have seen a focus in the community not just on crime prevention, but on crime-solving too. Through Crimestoppers, calls to 9-1-1 and simple basic tips, our citizens are coming forward to assist law enforcement in making our communities safer. And I applaud their commitment and urge their continued vigilance in doing so.

We are adding more cameras throughout the territory. We have secured federal funds to improve our forensic and investigative capabilities. And we have beefed up our school security. We have appointed a Tactical Anti-Gang Coordinator at the Police Department to implement an anti-gang initiative. 

While we may not be able to claim that we are preventing all that we wish we could prevent, we all know that better police work will identify criminals before they can act over and over again. 

But anyone who tells you that force alone – a police force or any other – will stop this scourge of criminality is lying to you. The entire criminal justice system must be made to work better and to work smarter. 

Better police work linked to better prosecutions can take offenders off of the streets earlier in their careers and provide at least the possibility of deterrence and rehabilitation. 

Department of Justice 

The Administration is in the process of expanding and improving the prosecutorial capacity in the Department of Justice. Our Assistant Attorneys General must be able to go to court with well prepared, well investigated cases if they are to prevail. The duty and the responsibility to prove their cases are upon our police and our prosecutors. We demand much of them and expect much of them. 

In our courts we need consistency in bail hearings and bail restrictions. And we need fairness and consistency – and predictability – in sentencing. Only with this will we find that our mandatory minimum sentences, especially those involving guns, will be implemented and will provide the deterrence and the protection we look to these laws to provide. But our judges can only act on what our prosecutors bring before them. 

Corrections Reform

As a newly established independent agency, the Bureau of Corrections has completed the significant improvements required at the Golden Grove facility. Now, with facility improvements completed and more corrections officers on the job, we have begun the process of repatriating some of our inmates back from off-island correction facilities to a facility where security and control are no longer at risk.

Emergency Preparedness

Implementing the reorganization plan that this legislative body approved, the Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency, VITEMA, has made great progress as a stand-alone agency. We have put online our state-of-the-art 9-1-1 emergency communication system, which are staffed by well-trained emergency response professionals. With the development of the communications center that will be integrated into the new VITEMA building, this facility will function as the first federally certified fusion center in the Caribbean. The combination of our commitment, our investment, and its endorsement by FEMA, the FBI and the Homeland Security apparatus will put us in the forefront of emergency management and homeland security in the region.

Support for First Responders

Governor de Jongh and Lt. Governor Francis have great respect for our Territory’s first responders – our police officers, our firemen, our EMTs, our other law enforcement professionals – who were called upon to put themselves in harm’s way to protect us. This year we saw a number of major incidents – from the fire at Mountaintop to the Duccaneer accident – from bomb threats to the recent dummy grenade on a cruise ship – and our front line professionals deserve our acknowledgement, our gratitude and our respect. 

The Administration's reorganization efforts have also provided the Virgin Islands National Guard the opportunity to expand its role, even as our service men and women continue their work in service to our community and our nation. As we have begun to undertake the construction of a new Regional Training Facility and the Joint Force Headquarters, we have also gained U.S. Department of Defense approval to build out the Air National Guard to expand our security involvement in the Caribbean.