Police or gunmen?That is the question posed as to who has the advantage in reaction to the decision by the police commissioner to modify the weaponry for some cops on operational duty, as reflected in the following two Letters of the Day.
The Editor, Sir:
I was dumbfounded when I read the headline of The Gleaner on Tuesday, March 11, titled 'M16s to go', as attributed to the Commissioner of Police, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin. This, it is said, is an effort to avoid collateral damage because of the high-powered nature of the M16 weapons.
My question is, are the security forces, by this action, playing into the hands of the criminal elements and allowing organised crime to take over? To my thinking someone is losing their sense of judgement. Commissioner Lewin, while I am sure is only trying to implement measures that will bring about a change in our crime statistics, needs to bear in mind that the weapons that the criminals are carrying right now far outweigh those of our police force.
One has to look at the recent pattern of crime, gun slaying and gun smuggling into the island. The criminals are using the most sophisticated, high-powered weapons, are we then going to leave our security personnel and the populace at their mercy? This is certainly what the criminal elements want to hear, that the weapons that the police are carrying are non-lethal, so they can rob, commit murders and do whatever they want without fear of death.
There is nothing wrong with training the police to be martial arts experts, but asking them to face hardened criminals empty-handed, I say, is sending the wrong signal and the whole policy needs rethinking. If there is no retraction of this new policy, we are basically going to end up as a country under siege, because there may be no security personnel left alive to defend the law-abiding citizens, unless the gun-control law is lifted allowing every law-abiding citizen to carry a firearm, and here, it is only the fittest that are going to survive.
I am, etc.,
DUDLEY BROWN
Kingston 10
