Over the years I have no­ticed a ma­jor de­cline in the morale of the peo­ple of St James. Up­on deep­er stud­ies I re­alised that a huge con­trib­u­tor to this de­cline is the fear that has been in­stilled in us from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment which has been plagu­ing the dis­trict for some time. The same crim­i­nal el­e­ment that has been al­lowed to run ba­si­cal­ly free is now hav­ing their way with the once vi­brant com­mu­ni­ty.

I would like to ap­peal to the cit­i­zens and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to open their eyes and see how far-gone our beloved town has be­come. We need to come to­geth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty and work with our law en­force­ment agen­cies to take back what was ours, the free­dom to walk our streets with­out fear.

We as a peo­ple and a com­mu­ni­ty need to work in con­junc­tion with the po­lice and to be­come more in­volved and sup­port­ive. No longer can we just blame out­siders for the crime prob­lem. No longer should we have to live with the fear of re­tal­i­a­tion, the fear for our lives and those of loved ones.

The suc­cess of our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has led to in­creased com­merce with­in St James. This makes for even more at­trac­tive tar­gets. St James no longer hous­es "toy" busi­ness­es; we have grown vir­tu­al­ly overnight as a com­mer­cial force and as a re­sult the crim­i­nal el­e­ment views us as a ripe tar­get. What we need is the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to now be­come more proac­tive and lead the ini­tia­tive against crime.

Let us work to­geth­er, the cit­i­zens, the busi­ness­es and the po­lice. Let us take ad­van­tage of the tax breaks pro­vid­ed for us on closed cir­cuit mon­i­tor­ing and ral­ly to have our neigh­bour­hood and our main roads mon­i­tored and watched over. Let us ral­ly for more po­lice pres­ence on the streets; to have reg­u­lar pa­trols on both the main road as well as the side streets.

Most­ly, let us as a com­mu­ni­ty es­tab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tions with each oth­er as well as the po­lice. We no longer have to be in­di­vid­u­als, we can rise up and be­come a com­mu­ni­ty pro­tect­ing each oth­er, send­ing the mes­sage that crime will no longer be tol­er­at­ed in our beloved St James.

Coun­cil­lor B Ram­su­chit

St James East Dis­trict