ComPol Williams: Let’s Talk About Children with Guns

Chester Williams

ComPol Chester Williams says that there is need for further intervention among the youth, who are wielding guns and carrying out these criminal activities. He says that it is time to have these tough conversations.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“One murder is one murder too much. Every life lost leaves families grieving, leaves children without a parent. And so it goes to show that our society on a whole needs to really look at ourselves and to see what is it that we are not doing that we should be doing or what it is that we are doing that we can do more of. I surely believe that the narrative as it relates to young persons, minors, need to change. I have long said that while it is good to say to minors to children that they have certain rights, it must equally be important for us to say to them that with these rights come certain responsibilities. And I also believe that whenever a minor commits an offense or commits a crime, we need to make it know to that minor that he or she commits a crime or offense. And it is only by so doing that we will be able to see a shift in the behaviour of our young people. Yes there are some people who have this mentality that because these persons are children that they are incapable of committing a crime and it is these same children who are out there for the most part committing the most heinous of crimes. And while I do support the different organizations that rallies for children, because I too rally for children, but I also believe that when something goes wrong, we must equally come out and let the children know that what is taking place is wrong and it needs to change. If it is that we don’t get a hold of the twelve to sixteen year olds now, in the next two three years, they are going to be the problem makers. And so we have to do things to bring them to table and give them alternative methods and let them understand that there is more to life than picking up a gun. And where society fails to guide these young persons, then they are captured by the gang elements and they are used as the vehicle to go and commit crime, to execute the big man crime.”