After the liquidations
Twee days after the fourfold liquidation near Parera on the access road to Punda the police in Willemstad still has no idea whatsoever about what happened last Saturday night. NOS-correspondent Dick Drayer sums up the situation in his personal blog De Aachterkant van Curacao.
“Even better: Chief Commissioner Mauricio Sambo complains publicly about the fact that hardly any witnesses have come forward in the first hours after the murder of 32-year-old Reegi Angelista, 39-year-old Elery Cijntje, 48-year-old Harold Francisca and 54-year-old Purcival Brooks.
Literally Sambo says: “It cannot be so that in such a crowded area like Parera on Saturday evening that so few people have come forward as witnesses.” That statement can be taken in different ways. For instance: many bystanders know the killers and they foresee problems if they share information with the police.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has assembled a TGO – a team for large-scale investigation, just like after the assassination of Helmin Wiels in 2013; this time not with the Detective Collaboration Team RST but with the Royal Marechaussee and the Coast Guard. The latter party is especially needed to make Curacao free of weapons, even though everyone in the judicial chain admits that this is impossible. It is a public secret that weapons enter Curacao easily through one of the 300 little bays that adorn the coastline.
The two days between the liquidation and the press conference (on Monday – ed.) create the impression that everybody is concerned but there does not seem to be any decisive action. The police force will not get more competencies than it already has; maybe it will be up the frequency of preventive searches somewhat. But anything else? No, it was not convincing at all.
Outgoing Prime Minister Hensley Koeiman dismissed the idea of declaring a state of emergency and track down illegal weapons with rigorous searches in profiled districts, as one journalist suggested; that’s too heavy-handed and bad for tourism. As if shooting isn’t, I would like to add.
The smart journalist who asked the question even warned Koeiman that his interim-successor from the Group of Twelve gets a weapon at his disposal very easily this way; he could declare the state of emergency and use it as an argument to postpone the April 28 elections.
Law enforcement is going to put a lot of efforts into finding the reason for the shooting it appeared from answers to questions from journalists during Monday’s press conference. That is great, but has this not already been done before? Like looking into the background and causes of atrako’s (armed robberies) and gang violence?
For this reason a question about this went to Justice Minister Orelio ‘Kid’ Martina. To be more specific, that question was about the scientific crime analysis of 2013. The question came so unexpected that the minister shoved the microphone quickly to Heiko de Jong, the Chief Prosecutor in Willemstad.
And that is not surprising at all. De Jong is the only one who knows that the large-scale research into criminality was halted because the principals were not happy with the results. For principals read: the prosecutor’s office and the former Justice Minister Nelson Navarro. Even better: an order has been given to destroy all the research.
The 2013 research was however supposed to go further than analysis. At the express request of the prosecutor’s office the idea was to develop insights but at the same time to come up with feasible measures to influence the security situation where this was deemed necessary.
I know the prosecutor’s office as an active organization that is able to think outside the box and that initiates projects – together with partners in the judicial chain – to create a safer community. But the answers from De Jong and Chief Commissioner Sambo and the lack of concrete measures after the events of last Saturday are in my opinion more worrisome than the lack of assistance from witnesses at Parera that is such a concern to law enforcement.
De Jong admits that there are problems with the follow up to the crime analysis. But he does not say more than that. Maybe the prosecutor’s office should put all its cards on the table, because this way the tackling of heavy gun violence appears to be a political choice, just like the lack of additional measures after last Saturday.”
