Crime And Punishment

After about a year and a half of the gruesome murder of Jamida Webster, an Anguillian school girl, a man has been arrested and charged with her murder. The matter is now before the courts for the eventual trial by judge and jury. It will now be for the prosecution to prove its case against him and for justice to take its course, but it must be understood by the public that notwithstanding the gravity of the situation he is entitled to a fair trial and the facts of the case must speak for themselves. The matter is sub-judice and no further comment needs to be made.

While there may be a breakthrough in this case, there are two more cases of murder and one disappearance to solve. We need to have all of the perpetrators identified and brought to justice so that the island and its people can settle down again in peace and quiet.

One of the sore points about these unfortunate incidents has been the reluctance of persons on the island to come forward with information that could assist the police in their investigations to quickly solve the crimes and for just punishment to be meted out.
This lack of cooperation has added to the shame the island has experienced by the murders and this type of attitude should be roundly condemned.

Anguilla is making significant progress in economic development and to a great extent the tourism industry is being built on the hospitality and good name of the island and its people. We need to protect this by whatever means possible and the control of crime must be one of those ways.

In order to help accomplish this, special attention must be paid to the strengthening of our law enforcement agencies and our people must cooperate with them in reporting and solving crimes. All of us need to feel secure in a crime-free society and we must do our part to accomplish this.

We are grateful to the visiting police officers who have been assigned to assist the island to solve the crimes and hope that it will not be long before the dragnet takes in other offenders.