Vehicles for police on the way,
restructuring plan coming too
PHILIPSBURG--The St. Maarten Police Force will receive seven new police vehicles shortly and a team of Dutch experts will be in St. Maarten by the end of this week to discuss with the local management of the Police Force how to upgrade the Police Force management-wise.
Justice Minister David Dick made the announcement about the purchasing of vehicles during Tuesday’s meeting of the Central Committee of Parliament. The meeting dealt specifically with the safety issue in St. Maarten.
The vehicles will cost approximately NAf. 250,000. The money came primarily from the crime fund, said Dick who fielded a barrage of questions concerning all aspects of justice, police and the safety situation in St. Maarten.
Concerning the functioning of the Police Force and the possibility of receiving personnel assistance, he said a team would come from the Netherlands, hopefully by the end of this week, to sit with the police management to discuss the restructuring of the Police Force and to help determine how many police officers St. Maarten needed.
“Currently St. Maarten has about 120 police officers, but the organisation is very antiquated. I expect to receive a document on reorganisation and how many people we will need,” Dick said.
During his entire presentation in Parliament, Dick stressed that isolation of the Police Forces after the constitutional change would be the greatest enemy for the judicial chain. “It’s important to have cooperation among the islands and with other nations to exchange experience and knowledge.”
Like Constitutional Affairs Minister Roland Duncan, Dick stated that the islands should set up receiving entities. “We cannot transfer responsibilities without a receiving entity,” he said.
He identified the uncontrolled growth of the population as St. Maarten’s biggest judicial problem. Not only does the island not have the manpower to deal with the explosive growth, but also the finances have been lacking.
He once again repeated that his policy was based on creating a data-driven Police Force. He has focused on improving police management because without proper functioning of management, the necessary changes for the better cannot be made.
He assured the Parliamentarians that the fruits of this policy would be visible within two years. He stated that police intelligence already had improved enormously and that the police were able to conduct investigations that had been impossible two years ago.
But for the improvement to continue, Dick said, more training will be needed. He said the changes were important for when the transfer to the new entities has to take place. “Copying our current system will fail for sure,” he said.
Regarding the WODC report, Dick stated that the findings of the report should be used correctly as guidelines. “We can deal with the report in a professional way or handle it in such a way that it will cause harm. I want to leave office having taken away the possibility of a similar report being made ever again.”
He said he already was dealing with several of the issues raised in the report. One example he mentioned was that the report called for more and better cooperation between the different Police Forces in the Netherlands Antilles and he had been working on that.
He stressed that the report had nothing to do with Dutch colonialism or the constitutional change process. Similar reports were made for Curaçao and Bonaire, but for certain reasons there was a delay in publishing the report for the Windward Islands.
Dick said he could not give any specific figures on how much money had been spent on Justice in St. Maarten of late, but investments in a new IT platform and in the Common Court of Justice had been to the benefit of all islands.
He explained to the Parliamentarians that 90 per cent of the funds the Netherlands had made available for the Netherlands Antilles Safety Plan had been for management and only 10 per cent for other means.
The negotiations on how the 21 million euros the Dutch Government has agreed for the second phase of the Safety Plan should take place in January next year.
However, Dick said the Dutch already had indicated that 70 per cent of the 21 million had to be allocated for the police. He admitted that due to this, he would not have sufficient money for upgrading of the prison institutions. He had requested 150 million euros in total so he could also deal with the many problems the prisons have been facing.
“During the last political summit I requested to put problems at the prison and Immigration on the agenda of every meeting, so when December 15, 2008, comes it will not be a problem anymore,” Dick said.
