Brathwaite expressed this concern on Friday morning while addressing the closing ceremony of the Regional Security System Training Institute’s week-long hostage negotiation course in Barbados. Seventeen participants from across the region graduated from the course.

The attorney general, who is also the minister responsible for home affairs, said that the issue must be tackled from a regional perspective, as it affects all citizens, and foremost must be an examination of how firearms come into the region in the first instance.

“The issue of firearms in the region concerns all of us… firearms play a role in crime and it involves all of us. Is it a case of them being shipped to St Lucia, to St Vincent and from St Vincent to Barbados? We have to look and see whether or not the criminal elements in the region are not a bit more coordinated then we assume. We, therefore, have and need to be more targeted in our response and in some cases more robust in our response,” he stressed. 

Noting that the territories in the region could no longer afford to be reactionary in terms of their response to crime, Brathwaite told graduates and stakeholders that “a targeted and unified response” on the war on crime was critical if illegal firearms and contraband were to be combatted.