Crime Stoppers has an advocate in new TCI Governor

#Providenciales, August 6, 2019 – Turks and Caicos – New Governor Nigel Dakin, after attending the Friday Crime Stoppers Annual General Meeting, is now a vocal advocate for the service.

“You can be courageous; you can demonstrate personal integrity – but you can also be safe – if you report what you know to Crime-Stoppers on that number 1-800-8477.  They won’t ask your name. Everything is deliberately anonymous; much investment has gone into it and it all fails if it fails one caller, once. The call is taken in Miami. There is no call identification. It cannot be traced. The information can’t be too small, it might just provide a start point to allow a thorough investigation that will lead to an arrest or a gun being taken off the street. You can provide a perfect example of your own integrity, your own quiet commitment to this community, by making that call.  Third time: the number is 1-800-8477.”

During his announcement of his choice for the new Deputy Commissioner of Police for the Turks and Caicos Islands, His Excellency Dakin offered a provocative position on crime and where it comes from.

“Crime occurs when members of a society choose to reject the norms that a society has decided it needs, for the good of all. Those norms are called ‘the law’.  Laws provide peace and stability. Laws provide prosperity and security. Laws allow us to live the good life rather than a life lived in physical fear, a life lived in permanent mutual suspicion fearing that the strongest will take all.  The answer to crime therefore does not come from the Police, or if it comes from the Police, it comes as a last resort.  The first responsibility of a society is not to build a police force to detect and arrest wrong-doing. The first role of society is to generate a climate where all who live within that society believe they have a sufficient stake in it that short-term possible profit, gained from wrong-doing, is overwhelmingly displaced by a belief that their stake is in the collective security, and humanity, that the law provides for and demands.”

The governor’s statement was admittedly intended to take the focus off of Police as exclusively responsible for abating crime.

“If you find yourself saying the Police needs to do more you have moved to the very end of the conversation you need to have, without tackling your own personal agency or the agency of your community in the issue. If the police needs to do more, the society that it serves needs to be healthier.”

Crime Stoppers, in its 23-years in the Turks and Caicos Islands still struggles to thoroughly convince residents that it is a confidential source for divulging crime-solving or crime-stopping information.  However, the Governor was insistent about the value of the agency which serves 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“There are good people out there, there may even be great people who some think of as ‘bad’ – through prejudice – but who do have a strong internal moral compass. Who do have integrity.  And who do know something. You can be courageous; you can demonstrate personal integrity – but you can also be safe – if you report what you know to Crime-Stoppers on that number 1-800-8477.”

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